The top award for Audio Reporting in the 2026 James Beard Media Awards, considered the “Oscars of Food,” has been awarded to alums Alyssa Jeong Perry (’16) and Teresa Cotsirilos (’17) for “A post-pollinator world,” for “Buzzkill” from the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN), distributed by PRX.
The awards, established in 1993, recognize “journalists who provide in-depth analysis, investigative reporting and compelling narratives that deepen the public’s understanding of food’s role in culture, politics and everyday life.” Awards highlight “excellence in book, broadcast media and journalism covering food or drink-related content.”
The winning entry from Cotsirilos and Perry, part of a six-part series on why pollinators are in crisis, focuses on how a biodiversity collapse has affected the Central Valley’s $4 billion almond industry and the 54 billion honeybees needed to pollinate trees. It also details robotic pollination schemes that might offer hope for farmers and how bees have increasingly become a commodity valuable enough to steal.
Alyssa Jeong Perry (’16) and Teresa Cotsirilos (’17)
Saturated with history and lively characters, the story was reported and hosted by FERN staff writer and producer Cotsirilos and produced by Perry.
FERN was also nominated for senior producer Ted Genoways’ “Trouble on the line,” a story about how a single TikTok video, taped in 2023 outside a meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado, would change the lives of hundreds of Haitian immigrants, and embroil JBS – the world’s largest meatpacking company – in a controversy over mistreating workers. Produced in partnership with Reveal, the episode dives deep into a poorly understood part of the food system, which is dependent on foreign-born workers. Steven Rascón (’22) of Reveal was one of the producers of the episode.
Steven Rascón (’22)
FERN joins top outlets The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic and The Atlantic in the two awards it won this year; making it their ninth James Beard Media Award.
“Broadcast storytelling has the unique ability to transport us, bringing audiences into unforgettable stories that feel immediate, immersive, and deeply human. This year’s winners remind us that, through food culture, we can broaden our worldview — offering a window into how people live, celebrate, care for one another, and make meaning in their lives,” said Cynthia Graubart, Chair, Broadcast Awards Subcommittee, in an announcement about the James Beard Media Awards.
Carrying on a tradition of alums working with alums
“This project was a delight to work on, and I was so happy I got to work on it with a fellow J-Schooler,” Cotsirilos said. “I’m honored that the James Beard Awards chose to recognize us.”
Perry, a freelance audio producer, agreed with her collaborator.
“It is such an honor to be recognized by the James Beard Awards for all the hard work we put into this podcast and the specific episode,” Perry said. “It was such a treat to work with a fellow J-Schooler — Teresa!”
The last alum to win a James Beard Award was in 2023 when Mark Kurlyandchik (’15) won for his documentary, “Coldwater Kitchen,” about a chef who had run a fine dining culinary arts program inside a Michigan prison for nearly 40 years.
UC Berkeley Journalism Professor Emeritus Michael Pollan has received three James Beard Awards. He won for best food writing for “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” in 2006, and for best magazine series in 2003. He was awarded the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2014. Pollan has mentored dozens of students who would go on to do important work in this beat.
The annual James Beard Awards consist of three events: The Media Awards, the Achievement Awards, and the Restaurant and Chef Awards. The award ceremony for Media took place at the Art Institute of Chicago on June 13.
About the winners
Teresa Cotsirilos is a staff writer and producer at FERN, where she covers labor rights and climate equity in audio and print. Her work has won statewide and national recognition (including a 2025 James Beard Award), and her investigation into human trafficking in the US sheep industry was a 2024 National Magazine Award finalist. She has been published by The New York Times, “Reveal”, NPR, “Snap Judgment”, Mother Jones, the California Report Magazine, PRI’s “The World” and other outlets. Prior to joining FERN’s team, Teresa produced and reported for WorldAffairs and KALW. She cut her teeth as a reporter and occasional host at KYUK, where she covered public safety and climate change in Western Alaska’s indigenous communities, won seven statewide journalism awards, and covered an illegal whale hunt. Teresa’s thesis won the Reva and David Logan Prize for Excellence in Investigative Reporting at UC Berkeley.
Alyssa Jeong Perry is an award-winning Los Angeles-based freelance audio reporter, producer and editor with a love for narrative storytelling. She is currently working at Politico (along with another J-Schooler, Zainab Khan (’16) and on a narrative podcast that should come out next year. She also worked in the development of podcasts, including “Buzzkill,” and an investigative narrative podcast about race and higher ed for Wondery/Audible and worked at Radiolab as a producer. Previously, she was a producer/reporter on NPR’s “Planet Money” and NPR’s “Code Switch.” Before switching to podcasts, she was a health reporter at KPCC, a producer and reporter at KQED in San Francisco, and a reporter/producer at “Reveal” from the Center for Investigative Reporting. At KQED and “Reveal”, she uncovered that Tesla undercounted its factory workers’ injuries to the government. That investigation, co-reported with Reveal, won the 2018 Investigative Reporters and Editors Radio Award, 2018 Third Coast International Audio Award for “Radio Impact” and was a finalist in the 2019 Gerald Loeb Awards Audio category. Perry was a Mark Felt Scholar in the school’s Investigative Reporting from 2015–2016.