Awards
TO PEOPLE IN PUBLIC MEDIA

Glass with CPB officials Curren, Theriault and Gilbert.

Ira Glass holds CPB's Murrow award presented at the PRDMC in San Diego. With him are CPB officials Vinnie Curren (left), Bruce Theriault and Lori Gilbert. (Photo: Bryan Meyer, California Convention Photography.)

CPB's EDWARD R. MURROW AWARD

CPB celebrates Glass’s ‘new aesthetic’ with Murrow Award

Posted July 24, 2009

Ira Glass’s weekly This American Life, launched with CPB backing in 1995, “created a new aesthetic for public radio, now emulated by a new generation of producers and reporters,” said CPB Board member Lori Gilbert, presenting Glass with the corporation’s top radio honor, the Edward R. Murrow Award, July 8 at the Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference in San Diego.

Glass came to public radio in 1978 as an NPR intern. Over 17 years with the network, he worked on nearly every NPR news program and performed a variety of jobs—tape cutter, desk assistant, newscast writer, editor, producer, reporter and substitute host.

In 1989, Glass moved to Chicago where he reported on public schools and race relations for NPR and co-hosted The Wild Room on Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ). The station became his partner in launching This American Life in 1995. The radio show inspired a 2007 TV spinoff series on Showtime as well as forays into live stage productions, including several high-def satellite broadcasts to hundreds of movie theaters.

The series has won journalism prizes including three Peabodys and a duPont-Columbia Award.

CPB’s Murrow award, presented annually since 1977, honors individuals who foster public radio quality and service and shape its direction.

PRADO DEVELOPMENT PRO OF THE YEAR

Anthony Hayes of Washington’s WAMU-FM is Development Professional of the Year.

So says the Public Radio Association of Development Officers, which saluted WAMU’s director of corporate marketing during the DEI conference in San Diego July 9.  At WAMU, Hayes’ department signed 209 new corporate underwriters in the past year, increasing sales to new sponsors by $3.2 million.

The station’s annual corporate underwriting has grown from $2.1 million to nearly $7.2 million since 2003. Before joining WAMU in 2003 Hayes was manager of corporate marketing at WETA in Arlington, Va., and national sales manager for Douglas Broadcasting in Alexandria, Va. He began his sales career more than 20 years ago at commercial WINS in New York.

RTNDA NATIONAL MURROW AWARDS

NPR wins four National Murrows

NPR leads pubcasting’s winners in the 2009 national Edward R. Murrow Awards announced last month by the Radio and Television News Directors Association. The network received four of the 17 top prizes announced for public radio and television news outlets in RTNDA’s annual competition honoring excellence in electronic journalism.

NPR’s awards came in the division for radio network/syndication service, but a total of six national Murrows were awarded to pubcasters in the small market radio division.  North Country Public Radio in Canton, N.Y., and WITF-FM in Harrisburg, Pa., led the division with two Murrows each and both won for their coverage of the Impact of War, an NPR editorial project providing assistance and a national broadcast outlet for station coverage of how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have affected life in their communities.

WITF’s Impact of War coverage topped the news series category and was credited to State Capitol Bureau Chief Scott Detrow and Audio Engineers Casey Houtz and Joe Ulrich. NCPR won for continuing coverage in an Impact of War series that was reported through extended efforts of its entire news team—Martha Foley, Brian Mann, Todd Moe, Jonathan Brown and David Sommerstein.

WITF also won for hard news reporting in “Aftermath of the Luis Ramirez Beating Death” by Tim Lambert, Morning Edition host/senior reporter, and Ulrich; NCPR took the Murrow for sports reporting with “Native Americans in Baseball's Past and Present” by Sommerstein. The award was Sommerstein’s second national Murrow.

NPR’s Murrows included the fifth major journalism prize awarded to the All Things Considered team that reported on the earthquake that devastated China’s Sichuan Province in May 2008. Co-hosts Melissa Block and Robert Siegel, who happened to be in the province preparing for a week of special broadcasts with a team of producers when the earthquake struck, provided eyewitness accounts of the damage and personal tragedies it wrought. The coverage, which aired across all NPR programs, has received Peabody, duPont-Columbia, National Headliner and Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi awards.

NPR also won for sports reporting with its coverage of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing and for the NPR.org multimedia series Dirty Money. The website presented a series of reports on the confiscation of drug money by local law enforcement agencies. Another Murrow Award credited to NPR went to “Mexico '68: A Movement, A Massacre and the 40 Year Search for the Truth,” a news documentary produced by Joe Richman and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes of Radio Diaries and presented on All Things Considered.

World Vision Report, a weekly public radio series funded by the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision, won in the national radio division for Daily Talk, a feature report by Prue Clark and for writing by Michael Kavanagh in a compilation of reports from Africa.

Three large-market public radio stations received Murrows for their reporting:

Additional winners in the small market radio division were:

The Murrow was the first-ever for both WUOT and Powell.

WGBH-TV was the only public TV winner in the 2009 national Murrows. It topped the large market TV division’s news documentary category with “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story,” produced by Stefan Forbes for Frontline, the PBS long-form investigative documentary series. 

SOUTHEAST REGIONAL EMMYS

At the Southeast Regional Emmy Awards, Georgia's state network took four honors and Alabama's took one

Two GPB Emmys went to the State of the Arts program, which has since gone on production hiatus. The last new show was produced in May 2008.

One award-winning episode was“Jim Henson’s Legacy in Atlanta,” tracing the Muppet creator’s longtime affiliation with the city’s Center for Puppetry Arts. The doc took the Emmy for TV news and program specialty, historic/cultural. Honored were Pamela Roberts, e.p.; Jennifer Houston Wood, associate producer; and Charlene Fisk, editor/videographer.

A second State of the Arts, “Art from the Heart,” won for arts/entertainment. Credited with Roberts, Wood and Fisk was Mitchell Zastrow, videographer.

GPB’s awards in other catgories:

Alabama’s statuette came for excellence in television crafts/audio–live and postproduction for We Have Signal, “Live from Birmingham.” Credited were Matt Whitson, director, editor and audio engineer, and Brad Lightfoot, audio engineer. The half-hour show was recorded live at Birmingham’s BottleTree Café features new bands.

The 35th annual ceremonies were June 27 at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead, Atlanta.

Compiled by Karen Everhart, Dru Sefton and colleagues. Send award announcements (complete lists, please, not a single winner) to .

Web page posted July 24, 2009
Copyright 2009 by Current LLC

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