IowaWatch Wins Top Broadcast News Awards For Politics, Farm And Agribusiness Reporting

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The IowaWatch Connection radio program collected seven awards — including first place for political coverage and farm/agribusiness reporting — for large market radio reporting during 2018 at the annual Iowa Broadcast News Association convention in Johnston, Iowa, on Saturday, April 13, 2019. The radio program had won first place the previous year, too, for farm and agribusiness reporting. The program is part of IowaWatch’s multimedia reporting effort. Each week, program host and producer Jeff Stein and IowaWatch reporters examine a story in depth during a 23-minute program that airs on 21 radio stations and then serves as an IowaWatch.org podcast. The program’s winning entries were:

First place: Political coverage for reporting on year-round interest in politics.

broadcast excellence

IowaWatch Connection Hits Milestone — 200 Programs

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The IowaWatch Connection radio report, part of a statewide audience engagement program, premiered July 5-6, 2014, as a 13-week experiment that would spread reporting by IowaWatch.org to a statewide radio audience. Two-hundred programs had been produced as of the weekend of April 27-29, 2018. This is a podcast of the 200th program. It revisits two stories that took top honors in the recent Iowa Broadcast News Association awards contest:

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.

nonprofit news

Thank You: IowaWatch Fund Drive Draws $19,000 Matching Grant

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Thanks to 179 generous donors The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism – Iowa Watch was able to raise $21,214 during its end-of-year News Match fund drive. Of that total, $19,021 was matched by the Fund for Nonprofit News at The Miami Foundation. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation provided funds for the News Match drive for Institute for Nonprofit News members. IowaWatch is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a consortium of nonprofit news organizations in the United States that, for this drive, provided fund-raising training and support. [Ed note: This paragraph was updated March 13, 2018, to reflect IowaWatch’s receipt of the News Match funds.]

The grant will be used to fund news reporting.