Best of Television Photojournalism 2005
TV News Photography: Station of the Year
Small Market
- 1st
- WHO staff, Des Moines, WHO
- Runner-Up
- KCCI staff, Des Moines, KCCI
Medium Market
- 1st
- WAVE staff, WAVE
- Runner-Up
- WHTM staff, WHTM
Large Market
- 1st
- KUSA staff, Denver, KUSA
- 2nd
- KARE staff, Minneapolis, KUSA
- Finalist
- WXIA staff, Atlanta, WXIA
NPPA judge Katrina Brown McCann said, "The winners had a lot of news value. They included stories we all have covered every day. But the stations of the year made every day stories unique and unusual."
She added, "These are stations that need to be honored for striving for excellence in photography.
"It was very important to the judges that the winning Station of the Year entrants included many photographers play a part in the entry," Judge Kurt Austin said. "Sometimes you can get a great reputation as a photography staff when you only have three or four great photographers. All of the winners had great stories from spot, deadline, general news all the way to feature and in-depth. For contests it is really easy to load up the tape with great feature stories but when it comes down to spot and general news stories all of the winners had strong news stories."
Katrina McCann points out the importance of the air checks that stations sent in as part of their entry. "The station of year was not just picked by the entry tape they sent us. We looked at every single air check that they sent us and we read their newsroom photojournalism philosophies that each entrant had to include. Then the judges watched the air check and the entry to make sure that what they wrote was consistent with what they showed in their entry."
Judge Scott Hedeen said he was surprised by how little participation came from the largest markets this year. "The major metros were not represented in this contest. I was looking for more stuff about the elections. I know the election happened all over the country and we saw little of that. We saw huge hurricanes hit in 2004. Lives changed. We saw little of that too. And the war in Iraq, we saw veterans come home, the happy side of the story, but it was not the issues behind the war. People need to laugh and smile but they need to know what is going on."
Judge Richard Essex said, "The state of local news as it was presented to us here was a little disappointing. I expected to see a lot of stories that would lead newscasts, not just great features. I wanted to see a really great town hall meeting, a city council meeting."