USU Broadcast Journalism Students Win National Edward R. Murrow Award

LOGAN — Utah State University students in the Journalism and Communication department have made program history, winning a national Edward R. Murrow Award for their half-hour program “Cache Rendezvous: Better Than We Found It.” This is the first Murrow Award at this level since the program started.

Students worked in pairs to create segments for the half-hour program examining environmental challenges facing Cache Valley. Their interviews included in-depth conversations about problems and solutions about the valley’s air, water and land issues. The class culture became one of challenging each other to do better as the project evolved.

Kainoa Johnson served as the show producer, with students Noah Giles, Verl Johansen, Anna Johnson, Paige Johnson, Marcus Lamb, Zahra Nasir, Morgan Perkins, Clayre Scott and Katie Varga working on the program. All are recent JCOM graduates with most of the students now working in the broadcast field.

The program is part of a JCOM class taught by Brian Champagne and Chris Garff.

“This is what happens when students get together and work hard. All of the students caught the vision and put in great work,” Champagne said. “It’s great to see their payoff. There are some big, famous journalism programs out there, but these hard-working students in Logan, Utah, took the prize.”

Awards on this level are a big deal, Garff added.

“Winning national awards, let me make that clear, best in the nation, against bigger programs is not easy,” Garff said. “It just goes to show that it is not the wand, it's the magician waving it. We happen to have some great magicians in our JCOM programs. … We are national champions."

The award will be presented at the 2024 Edward R. Murrow Awards Gala on Monday, Oct. 14 at Gotham Hall in New York City. The Radio and Television Digital News Association has honored outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971.

Edward R. Murrow’s pursuit of excellence embodies the spirit of the awards that carry the CBS legend’s name. More than 5,000 entries from hundreds of digital and broadcast network journalism organizations competed for this year’s awards.