Deadline:
May 14, 2025
Location(s)
Online United States of America
Overview
We invite students to create an original podcast of five minutes or less that informs or entertains. Contest dates: April 16 to May 14, 2025.
Details
Do you listen to podcasts? Do you tune in to find out what’s happening in the world? To stay up-to-date on sports, music, film, fashion or TV? To get advice? To laugh? To hear a good story? To learn something new?
Imagine you — or you and several of your friends — were behind the microphone. What would you talk about? Who might you like to interview? What thoughts, talents, insights, opinions or stories would you want to share with the world?
In our eighth annual Student Podcast Contest, we invite teenagers to submit original podcasts of five minutes or less. Your creation can be about anything that interests you, in any form that you like. Our favorites will be featured on The Learning Network.
Take a look at the guidelines and related resources below. Please post any questions you have in the comments and we’ll answer you there, or write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.
The Challenge
Produce a podcast of five minutes or less that informs or entertains.
You can create a podcast on any topic you like in any format you like, whether that’s an interview with an expert, an informal conversation with a friend, a journalistic investigation, a fictional story or anything else you can think of. We welcome podcasts across genres, including, comedy, true crime, news documentary, history, radio theater and sports — let your imagination run wild.
Just make sure that whatever you produce is a complete listening experience. That is, your podcast should have a clear beginning, middle and end.
Your submission can be an excerpt from a longer podcast, as long as you demonstrate thoughtfulness about how you are using time. The beginning, for example, should give listeners some context as to what they’re hearing; the ending can be a hard “end” of the podcast, or it can be the conclusion of a segment, or even the closing of an introduction within a longer episode.
Opportunity is About
Eligibility
Candidates should be from:
Description of Ideal Candidate
A Few Rules
In addition to the guidelines above, here are a few more details:
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You must be a student ages 13 to 19 in middle school or high school to participate, and all students must have parent or guardian permission to enter.
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Please be sure to use non-copyrighted sound effects or music, with some exceptions. Please be sure to use only sound effects or music that you have permission to use for your podcast and that do not violate the intellectual property rights of any person. Here are some ways to do that: 1. Don’t include any sound effects or music in your podcast. 2. Create your own sound effects or music using instruments or audio editing software. 3. Look for copyright-free sound effects and music, or sound effects and music that are in the public domain. 4. Use royalty-free music and sound effects, such as those on Freesound and SoundBible, that have a license that allows you to use them. 5. There are limited fair use exceptions when you can legally use copyrighted music or sound effects, such as when you are critiquing a song or reporting on a film. Read more about those exceptions to ensure that your use of copyrighted material does not infringe on copyright protections. If you use any music or sound effects, please list the sources in the designated field in the submission form.
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We suggest uploading your podcast to SoundCloud to make it easier for our judges to listen to your work. Make sure that the track settings are set to “public.” Our judges will also listen to entries hosted on other podcasting sites, including Podomatic, Buzzsprout, Anchor, Spreaker and Podbean. Please make sure you follow your hosting site’s terms of service. Note: We are not accepting entries on GoogleDrive.
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Your piece should be no longer than five minutes. Please be sure to check the length of your audio file before submitting. Just to be very clear, 5:01 is longer than five minutes.
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The work you submit should be fundamentally your own — it should not be plagiarized, written by someone else or generated by artificial intelligence.
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Your podcast must be original for this contest. That means it should not already have been published at the time of submission, whether by a radio station, another contest or an any other site (not including your own page or a teacher’s class page). However, after you submit to this contest, you are allowed to submit your entry to another publication or contest for possible publication.
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Keep in mind that the work you send in should be appropriate for a Times audience — that is, something that could be published in a family newspaper (so, please, no curse words).
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You may work alone or with a group, but students should submit only one entry each.
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You must also submit a short, informal “artist’s statement” as part of your submission, that describes your process. These statements, which will not be used to choose finalists, help us to design and refine our contests. See the F.A.Q. to learn more.
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All entries must be submitted by May 14, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time using the electronic form below.
Dates
Deadline: May 14, 2025
Cost/funding for participants
What’s the prize?
- Having your work published on The Learning Network.
When will the winners be announced?
- About six to eight weeks after the contest has closed.
Un-save Opportunity
Internships, scholarships, student conferences and competitions.
