KOSU earns 13th national championship

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Oklahoma State University's KOSU (91.7 & 107.5 FM “Oklahoma Public Radio”) is a recipient of one of the most prestigious broadcast journalism awards in the country: the Edward R. Murrow Award.   

KOSU is one of 72 recipients of this year’s award, chosen from a pool of 3,390 submissions nationwide. Since 1971, the Edward R. Murrow Awards have been presented annually by the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the world’s largest professional organization dedicated exclusively to electronic journalism.

KOSU Program Director Ted Riley won the national honor for a series of radio stories he produced focusing on the problems and possible solutions at the nation’s largest EPA Superfund site — Tar Creek — located in northeastern Oklahoma.  

“KOSU first reported on the Tar Creek situation four years ago. At the time, not much was being done at either the state or federal level to clean up the environmentally tainted 40-square-mile area or to help those affected by the environmental and health hazards associated with Tar Creek,” Riley said. “Since then, the state has made several efforts to help the residents, and to an extent, so has the federal government. But despite those efforts, after nearly a quarter of a century, Tar Creek still remains on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List. That’s what these stories were about.”

Under the leadership of KOSU General Manager Craig Beeby, KOSU has earned 235 national, regional and state honors for journalism excellence, including four national Edward R. Murrow Awards, two Scripps-Howard Journalism Awards, and the broadcasting equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize: the duPont-Columbia Award.

“What an exciting honor for KOSU during our 50th anniversary,” Beeby said. “This top-quality award is reflective of our wonderful audience and is one of the many exciting things that make up the tradition of the past 50 years of KOSU excellence. It couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

Riley will receive the Edward R. Murrow Award in New York City this October.