UW Oshkosh radio station WRST-FM was recently honored with several awards at the Midwest Journalism Conference in Bloomington, Minn.
The six-state Northwest Broadcast News Association (NBNA) honored WRST with three awards. The awards are named for and honor Eric Sevareid, the longtime CBS News reporter and commentator. WRST won a first place award in the category of radio hard feature with a segment by student Brandon Kinnard called “UWO Coach in Boston Marathon.” It featured an interview with a former UWO track coach who had competed in the Boston Marathon the day of the terrorist attack.
WRST also received two “Awards of Merit” from NBNA in the radio soft feature category. One was by WRST student station manager Alexander Crowe, which profiled the college career of an Iraq War veteran. The other was by student news director Spencer Wagen which marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. The segment included historic broadcast audio from the day of the assassination.
WRST was also recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) in their four-state mark of excellence competition. In the category for radio news reporting, WRST took first place for the Kinnard piece on the Boston Marathon and the segment will now be entered in the SPJ’s national competition. WRST reporter Jim Delury was a regional finalist in the same category with a segment on the impact of the Vietnam War in Oshkosh. This piece is part of an ongoing series Delury is producing for WRST about the history of the Oshkosh campus.
WRST can be heard in the Oshkosh area at 90.3 on the FM dial and worldwide at www.wrst.org.
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