'We built this together.' The 20-year legacy of KUOW's RadioActive

For 20 years, KUOW’s RadioActive Youth Media brought listeners the stories and perspectives of young people in the Pacific Northwest.

Through free workshops, high schoolers from mainly Western Washington learned the basics of audio journalism. And with these new skills, they created stories with perspectives you wouldn’t hear anywhere else.

"I think the beautiful thing about RadioActive is that because there were constantly new batches of students coming into the program, the subject matter itself wasn’t predictable," said Soundside producer and RadioActive alum Noel Gasca.

Like what it feels like to be a Muslim student, and go hungry at school because your cafeteria doesn’t offer food you can eat.

Or exploring new moves that challenge the gender binary within Bollywood dancing.

Or how an incarcerated teen celebrates Ramadan in jail.

Each of these stories — and the hundreds of others produced by RadioActivians — brought us a little closer to understanding the issues that matter to young people in our community.

But late last month, KUOW ended RadioActive due to a budget shortfall.

RELATED: KUOW lays off 8 staffers, ends RadioActive youth program

It was a hard decision to make, and it feels like a huge loss for so many whose lives were touched by the program. Soundside wanted to celebrate Radioactive’s legacy and share some of what made it really special.

RadioActive's roots

RadioActive’s origin is actually tied to another show in KUOW history — Weekday.

In 2004, two then-teenagers, John Duffle and Morgan Richards, came to the host of Weekday, Steve Scher, and told him they wanted to be interns.

“We didn’t know if we could, and we didn’t have a process for that. But we said okay," Scher said. "You know… don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness. So we took these two high school students on that summer.”

It went well, and Scher, with some pushing from his own son, decided to keep it going. So they put out the call for interns at Nathan Hale High School, where his son was attending, and a few other schools, picked four, and taught them the ropes of how to produce their own stories, and talk shows.

The program was called “Weekday High.”

"It's great to be given that sort of responsibility and authority. When you're in high school and get to come in and work with professionals," Scher said. "Everybody lent a hand in one form and other to teach different workshops. And at the end of that year, I just thought it was a good thing and that we should formalize it.”

The station managers at the time decided to designate money for a formal program, and hire staff to run it — and voila, RadioActive was born.

RELATED: RadioActive honored with four national awards in 2023

Over the years, RadioActive evolved into a full-time program, with Intro to Journalism workshops held throughout the school year.

Over 20 years, the program served more than 6,000 youth in Washington.

At the time the program was ended, RadioActive was in the midst of another reinvention — the team was trying to figure out how to shift from introducing teens to radio journalism to forming a career training program.

The goal was to expand access for young journalists who may not have a clear and easy pathway into newsrooms.

Mentoring the next generation of journalists

Over the years, RadioActive journalists brought listeners stories that were unique and unlike anything else you could hear on KUOW's airwaves.

And that focus on diverse voices made a difference in the stories RadioActive produced. Lila Lakehart, the former program manager for RadioActive, remembered one piece from 2014 about gay straight alliances, or GSAs.

"That was a story that literally nobody knew about except the people going to those schools who were a part of those clubs," Lakehart said. "And they were able to report that story in a way that no KUOW reporter would ever be able to do. They just didn't have the access.”

Over the years, RadioActive stories touched on themes of religion, cultural divides, incarceration, sexuality, and gender identity.

These stories can be challenging for any reporter to tackle, but RadioActivians approached these stories with care and intention.

RELATED: ‘Transmitting weirdness into the airwaves.’ An experimental RadioActive showcase

Jadenne Radoc Cabahug was in the RadioActive class of 2018, and is currently the emerging journalist news fellow at Cascade PBS in Seattle.

She said she still draws upon the lessons and techniques she learned while interviewing a sex trafficking survivor for a RadioActive story.

"She told me that she wanted other people who were in situations like hers, or this, the same exact situation she was in to know that this wasn't normal. That was her kind of her reasoning for wanting to tell me that story," Cabahug said. "To go through with it, even if it meant reopening these old wounds. And so that's something that really sticks with me.”

Cabahug ended up winning awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association for her reporting, among the dozens of awards RadioActive reporters received for their work over the last two decades.

RadioActive's legacy

At the end of the day, RadioActive means a little something different to each of the roughly 6,000 people who were part of the program, said Soundside producer Noel Gasca.

To her, RadioActive represented finding her voice, and her place in the world.

"To others, RadioActive represents the first time in their lives where they truly felt seen and respected by adults," Gasca said. "And for some, it was just a really fun experience. RadioActive represented a community we built together."

Though RadioActive has ended, Lakehart wants youth to "feel the power of their voice" and remember how important storytelling is to the world.

"I hope that the young people who pass through RadioActive no matter what they do with their lives, that power and responsibility, and joy, and storytelling, I hope that that will stick with them,” they said.