Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Scott Detrow has been awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for his radio documentary, Treating the Rainbow Nation: AIDS in South Africa.
Detrow, who anchors a weekly broadcast on Fordham University’s public radio station WFUV, was one of a dozen honorees that included veteran broadcast journalist Dianne Sawyer and author and historian Douglas Brinkley.
Detrow won in the college radio division.
“I was pretty excited,” Detrow said. “I had applied back in January and hadn’t heard, and then I got a call from Ethel Kennedy and at first I wasn’t sure if it was a prank call or not. It was quite an honor.”
The RFK Journalism Awards were established in 1968 by a group of reporters covering Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign. The awards are one of the few in journalism determined solely by journalists. Award recipients over the past 39 years have, in one form or another, sought to tell the story of those most disadvantaged in the United States and throughout the world.
Detrow, who will graduate in May with degree in political science and English, traveled to South Africa last year with funding from the Leahey Renaissance Student Award to cover the AIDS pandemic. He interviewed patients and AIDS workers at South African hospices, research centers, clinics and orphanages and amassed 10 hours of interviews. He edited the interviews into a 57-minute program, which first aired on WFUV. It also aired on the San Francisco public radio station, KQED.
By Victor M. Inzunza
