Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

KUJH, students win awards

KU’s television station awarded for outstanding work

The University of Kansas television station, KUJH, won five first-place awards from the Kansas Association of Broadcasters this year. Many students talk about their award-winning stories.

By Jessica Wicks

Monday, May 5th, 2008

The University of Kansas television station, KUJH, won five first-place awards from the Kansas Association of Broadcasters this year.

It received awards for best complete newscast, station Web site and three enterprise news packages.

Dick Nelson, station manager, said that compared with previous years, the station did rather poorly. He said this was the least amount of awards that he remembered the station getting.

“Our individual winners may deserve more than the usual credit,” Nelson said.

Sam Knowlton, who won first place for his enterprise story on biodiesel, credited Nelson and Rick Musser, journalism professor, for providing guidance along the way.

“It was a collaborative product,” Knowlton said. “They are committed to doing the best they can to help turn out the best product.”

He said the hardest part was having to reschedule.

“That was kind of tedious, but it really wasn’t a difficult story,” Knowlton said. “I tend to want to do my best at stuff like that. I was not doing it for KAB, I was doing it for us.”

Alex Wiebel, who put together the Web portion of the video, said it took a lot of polishing to make it worthy to submit, but he was proud of how it turned out.

He said what he was learning in the School of Journalism had helped him with his skills in new media as it evolved.

“It feels pretty good,” Wiebel said. “It is a good way to end my career at KU.”

Wiebel also won a KAB award for radio his freshman year.

Heather Brummitt, first-place winner of the complete news feature, said it was just the daily routine of excellence in the school that led to the awards.

“It was the repetition of having to go out every week and find a story,” Brummitt said. “Striving for something unique and different and going off campus to find story ideas.”

She said that she did the video that won near the end of the semester when they kept cancelling classes. That made it difficult for her, but things fell into place, she said.

“It’s an honor to have someone else recognize and compliment your work.”

The University won first-place awards in nearly a third of the categories. Although Pittsburg State University had the most awards overall, Kansas still won best station.

— Edited by Jessica Sain-Baird

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