Houston Community Media Honours Excellence in Journalism at 2026 Awards Ceremony

Antonio Hernandez

Telemundo Houston, KTMD

Antonio Hernandez is a news anchor for Noticiero Telemundo Houston, which airs weekends at 4:30 pm and 10 pm on Telemundo Houston/KTMD, the local station serving the Spanish-speaking community in the Houston area. As part of the Noticiero Telemundo Houston team, Hernandez reports on breaking news.

Southern Chinese Daily News

Story: “A cross-party vote by two Democratic lawmakers sparks controversy over party disciplinary action.”

Michael Esparza

¡Que Onda! Magazine

Story: “Exclusive Interview: Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia on Housing, Immigration and Her Re-Election Campaign”

In a pre-primary interview, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, the first Latina to represent Texas’s 29th Congressional District, traces her path from a South Texas farmworker family to Congress. She explains her plans to respond to rising housing costs, threats to health insurance subsidies and fear of immigration enforcement in Houston communities, including her Restoring Community Trust Act, which would bar the federal government from forcing local police to enforce immigration detainers. Garcia also discusses serving in the minority party, the federal money she brought home for flood control, transit and clinics, and redistricting that she says dilutes the voices of Harris County’s two million Latinos.

Tzu-Chang Tung

Korean Journal Houston

Story: “Great Harmony Transcending Generations, Ethnicities, and Genders: The Houston Korean Softball 2026 Summer League”

Houston’s Korean American softball league, a community tradition that once drew more than 1,000 players and fans in the 1980s and 1990s, returns after a decade-long hiatus caused by generational turnover and the pandemic, reports Tzu-Chang Tung for Korean Journal Houston. Across a nine-week summer season, teams fielded players from 13-year-old Little Leaguers to people in their sixties, and Korean Central Presbyterian Church went 11-2-1 to claim its second straight title.

Todd Smith

Regal Magazine

Story: “Miss Texas USA Taylor Davis Discusses Legacy, Leadership”

In a video interview with RegalMag.com recorded the day before she left for the Miss USA competition in Reno, Taylor Davis, an Allen native and the fourth Black woman to be crowned Miss Texas USA, responds to critics who dismissed her as a DEI pick to represent the nation’s winningest pageant state. Crediting her confidence to her time at Howard University, where she had her first Black teacher, Davis also discusses working as a social media data analyst for the NFL in a male-dominated field, mentorship under 2016 Miss USA winner Deshauna Barber, and competing for several years before she won the Texas crown.

Texas Chinese Radio

Story: “Ask Me About Taxes: Safe and Sound”

Hosted by CPA Ninggang Yao, Texas Chinese Radio’s “Ask Me About Taxes: Safe & Sound” translates complex tax rules, financial regulations and economic policy into practical, in-language guidance for Chinese-speaking listeners in Houston. Built around listeners’ real-world questions, episodes cover e-commerce tax compliance, real estate partnerships, property tax exemptions, Social Security, retirement and estate planning, trusts, overseas income and international assets.

Domingo Banda

La Prensa de Houston

Story: “Will The Price of Tomatoes Go Up?”

In a Spanish-language report for La Prensa de Houston, Domingo Banda answers a question striking a chord in Latino kitchens: will the price of tomatoes rise? Drawing on USDA, FDA and Commerce Department data, he explains how the end of a nearly three-decade U.S.–Mexico tomato agreement in July 2025 triggered an antidumping duty of more than 20% on most tomato imports from Mexico, which comprise 69% of the fresh tomatoes available in the U.S., and why consumers should expect higher prices later in the year.

Poojasai Kona, Aris Kian, Ariana Lee and Andrea Hernandez

Shift Press

Story: “Students Speak Up, Call Out and Advocate for the Community”

High school journalist Poojasai Kona argues that federal defunding of public media gives school administrators cover to censor student reporters, and that the risk falls hardest on the 32 states without New Voices laws protecting student press freedom. Tracing what she calls a “top-down trickle of censorship” from national media to school newsrooms, and drawing on her own interviews with student advocates and the Student Press Law Center, she makes the case that who controls what young people are allowed to write shapes both local coverage and pipelines into professional newsrooms.

Texas Chinese Radio

Story: “Hand-in-Hand Parenting Time” and “Impact of AI on Youth”

For more than 20 years, Texas Chinese Radio host Pamela Hu and University of Houston–Victoria education professor Hsin-Hui Lin have brought child development knowledge to Chinese-speaking families through “Hand in Hand: Parenting Time”, pairing academic research with everyday questions on topics ranging from parents’ roles, children’s spending money and perfectionist parenting. In one featured episode on AI and youth, Lin calls the technology’s impact on childhood “a very expensive experiment”, warning that children who lean on AI unsupervised can miss the tone, facial expressions and body language they learn from human interaction.

Xin Ping and Yi Yongji

New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV)

Story: “Abandoned apartments pose a safety hazard and will be demolished and renovated to improve the environment”

A Spring Branch apartment complex that sat abandoned for years, turning into a fire hazard and a magnet for crime, will be razed and redeveloped into public safety and flood-control infrastructure, Xin Ping and Yi Yongji report for NTD Television. With a total investment of more than $137 million, including $18.6 million to acquire the complex and $2 million to demolish it, the property will be replaced by 2030 with a new police station, a fire station and an underground flood detention facility expected to protect more than 1,000 nearby homes.

Eghosa Edebor

Christian Herald, Disaster Preparedness

Story: “How Texas Families Can Prepare Before Disaster Strikes”

Drawing from a Houston Community Media briefing for The Christian Herald, Edebor turns advice from Harris County emergency management and nonprofit leaders into a preparedness guide for Greater Houston families facing hurricanes, floods, freezes and extreme heat. Pairing the argument that “preparedness is a year-round responsibility” with a warning from Harris County Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator Brian Murray that “no level of government can sustain five million people for a day”, Edebor walks readers through building a seven-to-10-day supply kit, understanding insurance deductibles and flood coverage, signing up for Ready Harris alerts, calling 211 for help and finding local emergency resources.

Ayaan Moledina

Shift Press

Story: “Living Through the Darkness: My Journey with Mental Health Advocacy”

In a first-person essay written during National Suicide Prevention Month, 16-year-old advocate Ayaan Moledina writes about living with depression, OCD and anxiety since he was 10, surviving a suicide attempt after classmates ignored his calls for help, losing a close friend to suicide and watching his mosque community cut off mental health discussion after his friend’s funeral. Describing his work as federal policy director for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, he argues that policy alone will not save young lives without empathy from the schools, parents, faith leaders and peers around them.

Domingo Banda

La Prensa de Houston

Story: “In the Fight Against Cervical Cancer, the Common Cold and Blood Pressure”

A series of public service reports raising awareness of cervical cancer, flu vaccine, common cold and blood pressure prevention guidelines, tailored for the local Spanish-speaking community. These health advisory reports emphasise the importance of regular screenings to prevent cervical cancer, vaccinations to combat severe complications during peak seasonal illness, and lifestyle modifications, risk assessment and early treatment to help adults manage high blood pressure.

Jay Malhotra and Gautam Sinha

Indo American News Radio

Story: “Women and Menopause with Dr Anushree Kumar”

On this Indo American News Radio broadcast, hosts Jay Malhotra and Gautam Sinha talk with Dr Anushree Kumar, a certified menopause specialist in Sugar Land, about what happens to women’s bodies during perimenopause and menopause, including research showing South Asian women tend to reach menopause earlier, with up to a third reaching it before 45, which raises long-term heart and metabolic risks. Kumar explains how hormone therapy can relieve symptoms and protect long-term health, especially for women who have had their ovaries removed, and urges listeners to find doctors who look at a woman’s whole health, including ruling out thyroid disease or iron deficiency.

Laura Clisánchez

José Luis Castillo and Laura Clisánchez

La Esquina TX

Series: “They Come Looking For One Person and Take Others”

In “Terrenos Houston: El Sueño Americano Embargado” (“Houston Land: The American Dream Foreclosed”), a three-part, in-language investigation for La Esquina TX, Castillo and Clisánchez examine Colony Ridge, a 33,000-acre development in Liberty County whose promise of affordable land turned into owner-financed lots sold at interest rates as high as 12.9% with no check on buyers’ ability to pay, pushing mostly Latino families into foreclosure. The series follows the buyers who lost everything, while political rhetoric branding the area a crime and illegal immigration hotspot brought immigration raids that silenced residents. Federal and state lawsuits followed, ultimately leading to a $68 million settlement in February 2026.

Miguel Mejía

La Prensa de Houston

Story: “Revoking Visas, Birthright Citizenship and New Migrant Detention Centers”

In a series of in-language special reports for La Prensa de Houston published from July 2025 to August 2026, Miguel Mejía gives a running account of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, from the opening of tent detention camps at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” and Fort Bliss in El Paso to militarised zones that now cover about a third of the U.S.–Mexico border. Drawing on civil rights lawyers, lawmakers, border residents and federal officials, the series documents violent arrests, harsh detention conditions, 1,400+ migrants charged with trespassing in military zones, hundreds of thousands of planned visa cancellations and a Supreme Court fight over birthright citizenship that could redefine who gets to be an American.

Bell White

@TotallyRandie

Bell White, known as TotallyRandie, is a Houston-based digital journalist and content creator who works as National Social Media Correspondent for NNPA’s Black Press of America and also curates content for Houston Style Magazine. On TotallyRandie.com and across her social channels, she mixes culture coverage with reporting on issues facing Black communities, including the redistricting behind Rep. Al Green’s primary defeat after 21 years in Congress and the crash of an 18-wheeler freight truck that killed four young Texas women. Her additional work for BlackPressUSA ranges from interviews on prostate cancer among Black men to coverage of Houston community initiatives, including Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack Foundation STEM programme teaming up with NASA, and the city’s Movement Festival honouring George Floyd.

Ryan Tejero

@onepinoytx – One Philippines Texas

Ryan Tejero, editor of One Philippines Texas, is a Houston-based community journalist and content creator who covers Filipino life in Texas. Across One Philippines’ social channels, he mixes cultural pride content with direct political access, landing a one-on-one interview with Senate candidate James Talarico, securing credentialed access to The Texas Tribune Festival, and amplifying Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ engagement with the Filipino community.

Forward Times

www.forwardtimes.com

The digital home of the Houston Forward Times, the Black newspaper founded in 1960 and still run by the Carter family, publishes original reporting on the local news, politics, business, health and culture issues that matter most to the Black community it serves. Judges singled out its original reporting and ease of reading; its editorial depth made it the standout entry.