Hawai‘i Public Radio has garnered two awards for local news reporting over the past year.
HPR's Ryan Finnerty has earned the station a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association for his story “Before Graduation, ROTC Students Learn Lessons from Fallen Comrade.” The award is for the category of Feature Reporting in RTDNA’s Region 2, which includes California, Hawai‘i and Nevada.
The RTDNA Edward R. Murrow Awards are among the most prestigious in broadcast and digital news. The Radio Television Digital News Association has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. Award recipients demonstrate the spirit of excellence that Murrow set as a standard for the profession of broadcast and digital journalism.
Regional Murrow Award winners are automatically considered for a National award.
Additionally, HPR's Finnerty and Sandee Oshiro have been awarded with Second Place in the Radio II division for Best Continuing Coverage by the Associated Press Television and Radio Association, in recognition of the series "Native Hawaiian Activists Block Construction of the World's Largest Telescope." Reporting covered the daily developments of the protests atop Mauna Kea, and explored aspects such as the homegrown logistics network that developed to support protestors in the remote location. Judges praised the team for five days of on-the-ground coverage of the standoff between protesters and police; the developments were reported through text, photos, video, and audio (including the ambient sound of nene flying overhead).
The Associated Press is a not-for-profit news cooperative that represents thousands of newspapers and broadcast stations across the United States.
Fifty-six news stations submitted 375 entries in the contest, which featured news and sports stories from 2019.
