He's for real, folks!

We brought home a Chinese "Oscar" for Best Foreign Film at the recent China Academy Awards of Documentary Film held in Beijing on December 30, 2013…what a way to end the year!  While we couldn't be at the gala, in-person, we hear it was a big night for documentary filmmakers in China.  Competing in the foreign film category included documentaries produced by BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic. To be among such fine company, we are over the moon! http://www.chinadocumentary.org http://tv.sohu.com/20131230/n392655387.shtml

October 5, 2013 was a big night for the crew behind Deadline in Disaster!  Our documentary received a Mid-America EMMY Award in Cultural Documentary Feature from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.   Doug Crews, Executive Director of Missouri Press Association, accepted the award, along with producer/directors Beth Pike, Steve Hudnell, and Scott Charton.  

"Joplin: Our Words, Our Stories, Their hope" is a new online book you can order to  help Rebuild Joplin, a non-profit organization that is helping rebuild homes lost in the EF-5 tornado.  Written chiefly by KOMU's News Anchor Jim Riek and Meteorologist Michelle Bogowith, the collection of stories from the station's student reporters offers an insight into their coverage in the tornado's aftermath.  All proceeds of the book go to Rebuild Joplin, so please help support this worthy effort! Rebuild Joplin still has plans to built another 150 homes destroyed in the tornado.

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications presented seven journalism awards today at the seventh annual Mirror Awards ceremony. The event was held at Cipriani 42 in New York City.

The ceremony was attended by Kari Clark, widow of legendary entertainer Dick Clark ’51, who announced a lead gift from the Kari and Dick Clark Foundation for the naming of the Newhouse School’s renovated studio complex, currently under construction. Dick Clark Studios will open in Fall 2014.

Mirror Award winners, chosen by a group of journalists and journalism educators, are:

• Best Profile – Traditional/Legacy or Digital Media: Adrian Chen, “Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web,” Gawker
• Best Single Story – Radio, Television, Cable or Online Broadcast Media: Missouri Press Association, “Deadline in Disaster”
• Best Commentary – Digital Media: Craig Silverman, “‘Confirmed’ and ‘sources’ may not mean what you think they do on Twitter,” “In real-time journalism, declaring what you won’t report can be just as important as what you will,” “False Paterno death reports highlight journalists’ hunger for glory,” Poynter
• Best Commentary – Traditional/Legacy Media: Syed Irfan Ashraf, “Hard times for journalists,” “The face of confidence,” “Military-media relationship,” Dawn, Pique   
   
• Best Single Article – Digital Media: Joe Eskenazi, “Top 5 Ways Bleacher Report Rules the World!,” San Francisco Weekly
• Best Single Article – Traditional/Legacy Media: Ken Auletta, “Citizens Jain,” The New Yorker
• John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting: Jodi Enda, “Staying Alive,” American Journalism Review

 

Deadline in Disaster is among five finalists in the 2013 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting.  Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on June 5 in New York City.  Earlier this year, our documentary was nominated in the "Best Single Story - Radio, TV, Broadcast, Online" category of the competition. Finalists were chosen from a panel of over 300 entries by a group of journalists and journalism educators.  

Many thanks to Jonathan Groves, who invited our film crew and The Joplin Globe Editor Carol Stark to Drury University as part of the university's Voices Unbound Series.   Thoughtful questions and panel discussion followed our film, as Carol talked about what's been happening in her newsroom and its coverage of the community since the tornado devastated Joplin nearly two years ago.  We also learned from Carol that Joplin Globe reporter Andra Stefanoni recently received "Reporter of the Year" honors from the newspaper's parent company Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. in the large newspaper category for all of its CNHI newspapers across the county. Congratulations Andra!

We have much to be thankful for this year.  For starters, we are grateful for the outpouring of support to the Joplin community.  If you drive through Joplin nearly 18 months later, you will see businesses openings, students back to school in new buildings, and a sense of "new normalcy" for our southwest Missouri community that lost so much in the tornado.   

We had our premiere film festival screening last week! We are ever so grateful to the St. Louis International Film Festival for hosting our film. St. Louisans came out last Thursday to support our film, producers, and Joplin Globe Reporters Emily Younker and Wally Kennedy, who attended our screening at Plaza Frontenac Cinema.  


Thanks to all of you who have attended our film screenings around the state, read our web postings, and  for subscribing and reading your community newspaper!  Your subscription keeps our industry alive and healthy, and allows newspaper to do what we do best!  

A final, much worthy note to mention!  This week we learned that The Joplin Globe is the recipient of the 2012 “Newspaper of the Year” award from the Local Media Association, a national trade organization that represents more than 2,000 of the leading suburban and community newspapers. Congratulations to the incredible staff of The Globe who publish one of the finest daily newspapers! We are so proud of our friends at The Joplin Globe!  Read all about it here...

The images we're seeing in New York and the Jersey shores is much like what we saw in Joplin a year-and-a-half ago.  Our hearts and prayers go out to the people of the East Coast who are affected by this terrible storm.