The "WVU News" team won first place in the Television Newscast category at the 2017 Festival of Media Arts competition. "WVU News" won the top honor out of more than 1,500 entries.
Television viewers can now watch the number one college newscast in the country right here in the Mountain State.
This month, the Broadcast Education Association awarded “WVU News” first place in the Television Newscast (airing three days per week or less) category in the 2017 Festival of Media Arts competition. “WVU News” won the top honor out of more than 1,500 entries.
The winning entry, “Special Edition Heroin and Opioids: When Addiction Hits Home,” was produced by students at the West Virginia University Reed College of Media and focuses on the Mountain State’s rising heroin and opioid addiction.
WVU students involved with the award-winning project include Executive Producer Megan Saporito and Anchors Hannah Goetz and Kristen Tuell.
This is the second time “WVU News” has received the top award under the leadership of teaching associate professor Gina Martino Dahlia. The newscast also won a national Emmy Award in 2015.
“I am extremely proud of the continued success of ‘WVU News,’” Dahlia said. “Winning these high caliber awards is a testament to the quality of our students, faculty and our program.”
In addition to the first-place win, the news team brought home an “Award of Excellence” in the Television News Magazine category for their entry “WVU News-Special Edition: We Remember. Fifteen Years After 9/11.”
WVU graduates Shishira Sreenivas and Colleen Good were awarded second-place in the Educational Program category of the Student Audio competition for their entry, “WVU Student-Journalists Use DIY Sensors to Investigate Water Quality.”
On the research side of the BEA conference, Associate Professor Rita Colistra and alumna Chelsea Betts Johnson won a first-place award in the Gender and Sexuality Division’s debut category for their peer-reviewed paper, “News Framing of Marriage for Same-sex Couples: An Examination of Broadcast and Print News Coverage Surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court’s Landmark Decision to Legalize Same-sex Marriage.”
The BEA Festival of Media Arts is an international refereed exhibition of faculty creative activities and a national showcase for student works sponsored by the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation.
More than 175 colleges and universities are represented at the festival. Competition categories include audio, documentary, interactive multimedia, news, scriptwriting, sports, two-year/small colleges and video.
Award-winners will be recognized at the 15th Annual BEA Best of Festival King Foundation Awards Ceremony held in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Monday, April 24, 2017, as part of BEA’s annual convention.
A full list of 2017 BEA Festival of Media Arts winners can be found at https://beaweb.org/festival/
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CONTACT: Christa Currey, Communications
Director, Reed College of Media, West Virginia University
304.293.7016, christa.currey@mail.wvu.edu