People

Last Days lands Oscar nom; CPI, ProPublica recognized for data projects

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Last Days in Vietnam scored PBS’s American Experience its ninth Academy Award nomination. Rory Kennedy produced and directed the film for AmEx, a documentary series that has run since 1995. CPB provided support for the film. Last Days in Vietnam was nominated in the Best Documentary category, marking Kennedy’s first nomination. “When we conceived of this film three years ago, we knew it was a powerful story of individual acts of courage set against a background of chaos,” said American Experience Executive Producer Mark Samels on the show’s blog.

People

SABEW honors biz news, Michiganers land MAB awards, and more recognition for pubcasters

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SOCIETY OF AMERICAN BUSINESS EDITORS AND WRITERS
Pubcasters honored with SABEW Best in Business awards. NPR’s coverage of the “Health Care Website Launch” was named best radio/TV segment or interview, citing reporter Elise Hu and editors Uri Berliner and Neal Carruth. NPR’s Planet Money won in the innovation category for its episode “Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt.” WAMU 88.5 News’s Patrick Madden, Julie Patel and Meymo Lyons won for best radio/TV or investigative report for “Deals for Developers.” “Lots of ground covered, great interviews with lots of players and lots of tough questions asked,” said SABEW. “This is local accountability journalism at its best.”

ProPublica received three awards in the digital arena. ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger won for digital commentary for “The Trade,” which addressed the banking and financial industries; T. Christian Miller and Jeff Gerth were cited in the digital explanatory division for “Overdose,” a series investigating the dangers of acetaminophen; and A.C. Thompson and Jonathan Jones won for the digital feature “Assisted Living.”

The digital investigative prize went to Chris Hamby of The Center for Public Integrity for “Breathless and Burdened: Dying from Black Lung, Buried by Law and Medicine.” (“Breathless and Burdened” also won the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting presented by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government for CPI’s Hamby, Ronnie Greene, Jim Morris and Chris Zubak-Skees plus Matthew Mosk, Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz of ABC News; it was presented March 5 in Boston.)

The 19th annual BiB awards will be presented March 29 at the SABEW conference in Phoenix.

Quick Takes

Monday roundup: Polk goes to Frontline, CPB ombud calls for transparency in grant dustup

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• Frontline today won a George Polk Award for “League of Denial,” its investigation of the NFL’s efforts to downplay evidence linking head injuries of football players to long-term brain disorders. The nonprofit newsroom Center for Public Integrity also won a Polk for “After the Meltdown,” which explored the aftermath of economic crash caused by sub-prime mortgage lenders. A full list of Polk winners, presented by Long Island University, is here. • While CPB Ombudsman Joel Kaplan agrees with WNET’s decision to return a $3.5 million grant for its series reporting on public pensions, he remains troubled by “the lack of transparency by both WNET and PBS” in handling the controversy. He suggests the original agreement between WNET and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation needs to be disclosed.

People

Pubradio contenders dominate radio division of Sigma Delta Chi Awards

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Public radio reporters took all nine awards for radio reporting in this year’s Sigma Delta Chi Awards, which recognize outstanding reporting on radio, TV and the Web by national and local news organizations. NPR’s Ina Jaffe, Quinn O’Toole and Steven Drummond won for breaking news reporting (network syndication) for “Los Angeles VA Has Made Millions on Rental Deals.” For investigative reporting, John Ryan and Jim Gates of KUOW in Seattle were cited among stations in markets 1–100 for “Shell’s Arctic Oil-Spill Gear ‘Crushed Like a Beer Can,’” while Sandy Hausman of WVTF and Radio IQ in Roanoke, Va., won in the 101+ market category for “Naming the Fralin,” about naming the University of Virginia Art Museum. In the feature categories, Linda Lutton, Cate Cahan and Sally Eisele of Chicago’s WBEZ won for “The weight of the city’s violence, on one school principal,” and Lance Orozco of KCLU in Thousand Oaks, Calif., for “My Cancer.”

NPR’s State of the Re:Union, co-distributed by Public Radio Exchange, won the syndicated documentary award for “As Black as We Wish to Be,” which explored an Appalachian foothills town in Ohio where residents who look white identify as African-American; it was reported and produced by Lu Olkowski, Laura Spero, Taki Telonidis and Al Letson. Alabama Public Radio’s “Winds of Change,” coverage by Pat Duggins, Ryan Vasquez, Maggie Martin and Stan Ingold of a Tuscaloosa tornado, won for smaller-market documentary. The public service in radio journalism winners were “If it’s legal: Five ways legal pot could affect your life,” by the staff of Seattle’s KPLU (markets 1–100); Charles Lane and Naomi Starobin of WSHU in Fairfield, Conn., for “State struggled at fire prevention ahead of Manorville blaze.”

In the television categories, San Francisco’s KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting won for large-market (1–50) documentary for “Heat and Harvest,” a report on the effect of climate change on California agriculture by Mark Schapiro, Serene Fang, Gabriela Quiros and Craig Miller.