The Public Media Journalists Association, the organization representing public radio news professionals across the country, recognized Martha Foley for her more than 30-year career with North Country Public Radio.

The Leo C. Lee Award is considered one of the highest honors for news achievement in the public media system, according to a press release from NCPR.

"The Leo C. Lee award was created to honor those who have made a significant contribution to public radio news. Martha Foley has accomplished that and more by helping build and cultivate the news operation at North Country Public Radio," said Terry Gildea, PMJA Executive Director. "Martha's contributions to NCPR have made the station an example for many leaders in our organization to admire and imitate."

Foley helped shape NCPR’s news organization and served as a mentor, role model and trailblazer for other public radio stations working to develop significant news departments.

“We were so early in the local news game. Everyone was inventing the wheel at the same time,” Foley said, noting that the technology of the day included cutting reel-to-reel tape and filing stories over a landline telephone. “I tried to hire the strongest journalists I could. Then I got out of their way and didn’t hold them up by artificial constraints.”

Foley started at NCPR in the 1970s as a part-time classical music announcer. After she briefly left to take a job as a reporter at the St. Lawrence Plaindealer newspaper, Foley returned to the station to help establish its news department.

Some of the leading journalists in public radio are based at NCPR, in large part because of Foley’s leadership. “Martha says yes before she says no,” said David Sommerstein, NCPR’s Director of Broadcast and Digital Content. “She is so good at not being a top-down manager. She gives reporters the space to find the stories that inspire them and that strategy is going to lead to better reporting.”

As news director, Martha Foley encouraged reporters to think big. "Martha created a newsroom culture that set absolutely no limits on what we could try to pull off. She wanted to hear big ideas and she pushed us to make them real,” said Brian Mann, NCPR’s Adirondack Bureau Chief. “She changed my thinking about what a rural, small-market news department could be."

Mann credits Foley for her support as he built up his profile as a national reporter, filing more and more stories for NPR.

“We are all so proud of Martha,” said NCPR Station Manager Ellen Rocco. “Her body of work is impressive and will have an impact on public media journalists for years to come. She joins a group of the best in public media news who are previous recipients of the award.”

The award is named in honor of its first recipient: Leo C. Lee, the founder of Western Public Radio, a San Francisco-based public radio training program. Past winners include many groundbreaking public radio personalities, such as Susan Stamberg, Ira Glass, Carl Kasell, Linda Wertheimer, as well as All Things Considered founder Bill Siemering and Andrea de Leon, NPR’s Northeast Bureau Chief and a former NCPR staffer and an alum of St. Lawrence University.