IowaWatch Collects Eight Iowa Broadcast News Association Awards For News Excellence

The IowaWatch Connection radio program collected eight awards for large market radio reporting during 2017 at the annual Iowa Broadcast News Association convention in Cedar Rapids on Saturday, April 21.

Each week, program host and producer Jeff Stein and IowaWatch reporters examine a story in depth during a 23-minute program that airs on 20 radio stations and then serves as an IowaWatch.org podcast.

The program’s winning entries were:

• First place: Farm and Business reporting, for a report on foreign farmland ownership in the Midwest that featured a Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting story on that topic.
• First place: General Reporting, for a report on Iowa’s capacity for future rail traffic.
• Second place: General Reporting, for a report on the growing instances of Alzheimer’s disease in Iowa.
• Second place: Feature reporting for a report, “The Voices of Veterans,” on how veterans think Iowans can honor their service.
• Second place: In-Depth/Series for a report on an increase in combative political rhetoric on Iowa college campuses since the 2016 election.
• Second place: Best Use of an Actuality, for a report on a coercive technique police use to extract confessions to crime.
• Third place: Best Use of an Actuality, for the Alzheimer’s report on the growing instances of Alzheimer’s disease in Iowa.
• Honorable mention: political coverage, for a report on Iowa’s difficulties raising enough money this fiscal year, which ends June 30, to pay for spending planned in the current state budget.

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The IowaWatch Connection is a statewide audience engagement program launched as a pilot in July 2014 with a $25,000 John S. and James L. Knight Foundation grant awarded through the Investigative News Network (now the Institute for Nonprofit News). It is to air its 200th episode this coming weekend, on April 27-29.