RTDNA Adding Innovation, Social Media to Murrow Awards

WASHINGTON—There will be two more Edward R. Murrow Awards up for grabs in 2017, as the Radio Television Digital News Association has announced the addition of two categories for participants to compete in. The categories are Excellence in Innovation and Excellence in Social Media.

RTDNA describes Excellence in Innovation as an award for “news organizations that innovate their product to enhance the quality of journalism and the audience’s understanding of the news.” Entries will be judged on innovative use of content, engagement, technology and/or audience experience.

For the social media category, RTNDA looks to reward “news organizations that use social media to enhance the audience’s understanding of a single news story or news event/project, as evidenced by the quality of journalism and the quantity and quality of user engagement.”

New categories have also been added to the Student Edward R. Murrow Awards, including Excellence in Audio Newscast; Audio Reporting; Video Newscast; Video Reporting; and Digital Reporting.

In addition, RTDNA has opened the Excellence in Video category to allow radio stations to enter; inversely, television stations are now eligible to enter the Excellence in Audio category.

RTDNA will begin accepting entries for the 2017 Edward R. Murrow Awards in mid-December and close it in February. Regional winners will be announced in April, followed by national winners in June. For more information, visit www.rtdna.org.