Awards
TO PEOPLE IN PUBLIC MEDIA
National Press Club, summer 2008
Beyond Fear: America’s Role in an Uncertain World was honored by the National Press Club, a third consecutive win for a Stanley Foundation radio doc. Pictured: two of the producers, Keith Porter and Kristin McHugh.
Pubcasters were honored with three 2008 National Press Club Awards.
“News War,” a four-hour Frontline investigation on the future of news media, received the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism as a single entry, and David Folkenflik won for his body of work as NPR’s media correspondent.
The Press Club’s award for Frontline cited Lowell Bergman as reporter and co-producer. Many more members of the production team were cited in WGBH’s own credits, including Raney Aronson-Rath, Stephen Talbot, Arun Rath, Amy Baxt, Seth Bomse and Ken Dornstein. David Fanning is Frontline e.p. at WGBH in Boston.
The Press Club presented its Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence to Beyond Fear: America’s Role in an Uncertain World, a public radio documentary co-produced by the Stanley Foundation and KQED in San Francisco. David Brancaccio reported and hosted the one-hour program with producers Simon Marks, Kristin McHugh, Keith Porter and Jocelyn Ford.
The presentation marked the third consecutive year that Stanley-backed documentaries on international issues have received the award.
Walter Cronkite Award, presented 2008
PBS news duo Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.
The award, presented by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, “is a kind of Holy Grail for people like us who do television journalism,” Lehrer said at the awards luncheon in the school’s new facility in downtown Phoenix. “To be honored in the name of the best — Walter Cronkite — is as good as it gets.”
Lehrer and MacNeil began their partnership covering the Watergate hearings for PBS in 1973 and went on to create the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, which became the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in 1983. When MacNeil retired in 1995, the newscast was renamed The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. MacNeil is still active in the duo’s company, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, which produces documentaries, websites and other content in addition to the NewsHour.
Individual awards
Judy Stoia, e.p. of WGBH’s Between the Lions, received a Silver Circle Award from the New England chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Stoia launched the Emmy-award–winning children’s literacy show more than a decade ago and also helped create WGBH’s nightly news program Greater Boston. Previously, she worked at WCVB, the local ABC affiliate, where she created Chronicle, a nightly newsmagazine now on the air for more than 25 years. The Silver Circle Award recognizes an individual’s enduring contribution to the TV industry for more than 25 years.
The New York Hall of Science saluted Paula Apsell, e.p. of Nova.
The museum, based at the Flushing site of the 1964 World’s Fair, gave Apsell its Distinguished Service Award for Public Understanding of Science, which recognizes efforts to increase interest in and study of the sciences.
Radio & Records, summer 2008
WXPN and WFPK earned top honors from Radio & Records.
The trade magazine cited Philadelphia’s WXPN as noncommercial Station of the Year for the fifth time in a row in its annual Triple A Industry Achievement Awards.
The award, presented this summer during R&R’s Triple A Summit for both commercial and noncommercial stations, honored ’XPN among noncom stations in the top 50 markets.
WFPK in Louisville was cited as the top noncom Triple A station among outlets in markets 51 and smaller.
In addition, WXPN’s Bruce Warren was named Program Director of the Year among p.d.’s nominated from both commercial and noncommercial stations. Jim McGuinn, ’XPN afternoon drivetime host and p.d. of the younger-skewing program block (and Internet/HD Radio music stream) Y-Rock on XPN, was named Personality of the Year, also among both commercial and noncommercial outlets. McGuinn leaves Philadelphia next month to start work as p.d. of The Current, Minnesota Public Radio’s Triple A station.
Radio & Records Triple A subscribers vote for winners of the industry awards in various categories.
Published in Current, Dec. 22, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC