WFAE won three regional Edward R. Murrow awards Wednesday, including the top prize of Overall Excellence.
The station also won Murrow awards in the categories of Newscast and News Series. The newscast was anchored by Morning Edition newscaster Woody Cain.
Falling Short: Why Democrats keep losing most statewide races won for News Series. The three-part series, reported by Steve Harrison and Lisa Worf, focused on why Republicans continue to prevail in statewide elections despite projections that North Carolina was turning blue after Barack Obama won the state’s presidential election and Kay Hagan won a U.S. Senate seat in 2008.
Since then, Republicans have won the last three presidential races in the state. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cheri Beasley’s loss to Republican Ted Budd in November was the fifth consecutive defeat for North Carolina Democrats in a U.S. Senate race.
The stories were reported from Brunswick County, where explosive growth fueled by Republican retirees in the coastal county has helped offset Democrat gains in Charlotte and Raleigh; Anson County, a Democratic majority-minority county that in November went Republican in a federal race for the first time since Richard Nixon in 1972; and Charlotte, where low turnout in Democratic precincts contributed to Budd’s victory.
The Murrow Awards are sponsored by the Radio Television Digital News Association. WFAE competes in Region 8 of the Murrow Awards, with stations in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Regional winners will now be considered for national Murrow awards. National winners will be announced in August.
More About the Murrow Awards
RTDNA has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. Award recipients demonstrate the spirit of excellence that Murrow set as a standard for the profession of broadcast and digital journalism.
Murrow Awards are presented to news organizations and are based on the specific body of work submitted.
Regional Murrow Awards are presented to small and large radio, television and digital outlets based on 14 geographic regions. Regional winners are automatically considered for a National award. Network competitors are judged at the national level.