Original article online at https://www.ijpr.org/media-society/2020-10-14/jpr-wins-national-edward-r-murrow-award.
One of the three regional Edward R. Murrow awards the Jefferson Public Radio newsroom won last spring has just been chosen for a national Murrow award.
The Murrow judges chose JPR reporter April Ehrlich’s series “Oppressed By Wildfire,” as the best news series by a small-market radio station nationwide.
The Radio Television Digital News Association has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. Awards are presented to news organizations whose work demonstrates the spirit of excellence that Murrow set as a standard for the profession of broadcast and digital journalism.
“Earning a national Murrow Award is an achievement that recognizes the excellent high-impact journalism being produced in the JPR newsroom every day,” JPR Executive Director Paul Westhelle said. “The series honored by the RTDNA is the result of April Ehrlich’s professionalism, passion and talent as well as the commitment of JPR News to bring diverse voices to our listeners and address the issues of underserved segments of our regional community.”
Listen to the winning entry:
Oppressed By Wildfire by April Ehrlich
Jefferson Public Radio spent months speaking to families in Northern California about how wildfires impact them. We found that wildfires leave the most long-lasting impacts on marginalized populations — including people of Latino and Native American descent, people who are homeless, and people with disabilities. The key issue is that wildfire response and preparation systems weren’t designed with these communities in mind. (This series won both a Murrow and a first place award from the Public Media Journalists Association.)
