Friday, April 8, 2005

Nashville station, Rather, WNYC podcast all win Peabody Awards Nashville's Channel 5, WTVF, won a prestigious Peabody Award this week for its three-year "Friends in High Places" investigation into the awarding of hundreds of millions of dollars in state conracts to friends of then-governor Don Sundquist. So far, the awards committee noted, the investigation has resulted in three federal indictments and one conviction. Considered the electronic media counterpart to the Pulitzer Prizes, the Peabody Awards are made in national, international and local news and entertainment categories. ("The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" was another winner--for a second time--for its election coverage.) Here's the full list. National journalism awards included one to CBS 60 Minutes II for the story that broke the news of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse. The New York Times said the award raised eyebrows. The Abu Ghraib story was produced by Mary Mapes and reported by Dan Rather, the same team that several months later produced a flawed report on President Bush's National Guard service, relying on fraudulent documents. Mapes was fired as a result, and Rather decided to retire from his anchor chair earlier than planned. A Peabody spokesman said the two stories were unrelated, and that the Abu Ghraib report was deserving as "one of the most important stories of the year and was one of the crucial components of the ongoing conflict in Iraq." In radio, WNYC in New York won for its weekly behind-the-news program, On the Media, syndicated by National Public Radio. The Peabody citation didn't mention the program's dual-identity as online journalism: Not only is On the Media delivered as streaming audio on the Web, a few months ago it became one of the first professionally-produced programs to be distributed as an MP3-file podcast, as the station describes here. I've been listening to the program online or by podcast, since I don't live within range of one of the five Tennessee NPR stations that carry the program. (For more about podcasting, see my podcast background page.) In another "old media vs. new media" breakthrough, one of the "print media" Pulitzer Prizes awarded earlier this week went to a weekly newspaper's investigative report that actually was released first on the Web, as pointed out by Cyberjournalist.net complete with an image of the original Web publication, and a call for the Pulitzer board to recognize online journalism. 11:23:11 AM    comment []

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