The Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas recognized WFAE’s reporting with six awards, showing the station’s breadth and depth of coverage in the Charlotte region. The organization also named former education reporter Ann Doss Helms as Radio Journalist of the Year.
RTDNAC honors the best of TV, radio and website work in North Carolina and South Carolina.
WFAE’s awards include five first place recognitions and one second place:
· Breaking News – Four officers killed serving warrant in Charlotte
· Education – CMS goes door-to-door to get students back in class
· General News – Illegal weed, legal high: Confusion in NC laws
· Light Feature – Meet VanVan, the 5-year-old rap sensation
· Social Reform – Workers at risk in extreme heat; NC has no protections
· Political/Election (2nd) – Mark Harris makes a stunning congressional comeback
Ann Doss Helms
Ann Doss Helms covered education in the Charlotte region for over 20 years, first at The Charlotte Observer and then at WFAE.
Over that time, she became a defining force in education news coverage in Charlotte and North Carolina, writing about the people, policies and controversies that define a system as complex and crucial as public schools.
Whether she was covering a superintendent firing or a midnight school board meeting, a weighty topic like segregation or a lighthearted feature about the first day of school, Ann Doss Helms never lost sight of the people who it was really all about: the children.
She won a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award and several first place awards from the North Carolina Press Association. She retired from WFAE in 2024.