The IowaWatch Connection radio program collected six awards for large market radio reporting at the 2015 Iowa Broadcast News Association convention in Johnston, Iowa, on April 18. Each week program host and producer Jeff Stein examines an IowaWatch story in depth during the 23-minute program.
The program’s winning entries were:
- First place: Farm and Business reporting, for a report on farm safety that included reporting from Sarah Hadley.
- First place: Political coverage, for a compilation of reports related to politics.
- First place: In-depth/series, for a report on student debt that students from several college journalism programs in Iowa helped compile.
- First place: General reporting, for a report by host Jeff Stein on problems growing Iowa’s workforce and solutions to those problems.
- Second place: General reporting, for a report by host Jeff Stein on the debate over using common core standards in Iowa.
- Second place: Public Affairs, for the IowaWatch Connection program in general.
Also, Sarah Hadley, a long-time IowaWatch reporter splitting time in her senior year as a University of Iowa journalism and mass communication student as an IowaWatch assistant editor and The Daily Iowan-DITV producer, won first place for in-depth/series reporting, college media television stations.
Hadley was cited for a video report she did for DITV on Iowa’s texting-and-driving law. That report was based on an IowaWatch story she did in June 2014. Here is a link to her video report at IowaWatch.
DITV fared well in the IBNA college journalism category as well, winning several awards.
GO HERE FOR THE COMPLETE LIST OF AWARDS
Loras College students Allison Wong and Mareah Adolphs and Loras graduate Sarah Rochford, who have contributed to IowaWatch stories in 2014 and 2015, won awards for work they have done at Loras College’s LCTV: Wong, first place, and Adolphs, third place, for overall excellence in reporting; Adolphs, first place, and Rochford, second place, for spot news coverage; Adolphs, with Makaila Haase, first place for news photography; Wong, first place for feature reporting; Adolphs, third place for in-depth/series reporting.
The IowaWatch Connection, a statewide audience engagement program, was launched in July 2014. The Iowa State Bar Association became an underwriter for the program in 2015 after a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through the Investigative News Network (now the Institute for Nonprofit News) helped start the program.
Program host and producer Jeff Stein also is executive director of the Iowa Broadcast News Association and a noted Iowa broadcast historian. Awards were determined by independent, out-of-state judges.
