Congratulations to my WVXU-FM colleague, local government reporter Becca Costello, for winning the regional Edward R. Murrow Award for best large-market radio hard news story from the Radio Television Digital News Association.
The Clermont County native was honored for her July 5, 2022 story,"Sewage-contaminated water is seeping into an African American cemetery. Who is responsible remains a mystery."
Costello described how yellow caution tape restricted entry into part of United American Cemetery on Duck Creek Road in Madisonville because of contaminated groundwater containing human feces.
The cemetery is the final resting place for abolitionists, Underground Railroad conductors and more than 50 Civil War veterans. The oldest legible grave marker is dated 1832.
A regional Murrow Award winner is eligible for a national Edward R. Murrow Award. The regional and national awards will be presented Oct. 19 in Gotham Hall, New York City.
The only other local Murrow Award winner was Cincinnati-based Spectrum News for large market television excellence in diversity, equity and inclusiveness.
In the small market television category, Dayton’s WKEF-TV/WRGT-TV won three Murrow Awards for continuing coverage, digital reporting and podcast. Dayton’s WHIO-TV won for best hard news.
The Radio Television Digital News Association, founded in 1946, promotes and honors "responsible journalism,"according to the RTDNA website. Ohio is in Region 7 with Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. The other large-market winners were in Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland.
Cincinnati Public Radio last won a regional Murrow Award in 2018, when WVXU-FM was honored for overall excellence and for its newscast.
The awards are named after Murrow, a CBS newsman first known for his World War II radio reporting from London and his Hear It Now documentary series in the 1940s, and his trailblazing TV reporting in the 1950s with See It Now and Person To Person.
On See It Now, Murrow exposed Sen. Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the powerful House Un-American Activities Committee, as a bully by using the senator's own words. Murrow's confrontations with McCarthy were dramatized in George Clooney's 2005 film, Good Night, and Good Luck, which was nominated for six Academy Awards.
