WHYY News wins national Edward R. Murrow Award for 2023 election coverage

WHYY News was awarded a national Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) for its coverage of the 2023 elections in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The RTDNA awarded the news organization the “Excellence in Innovation” award in its Large Market Radio category Thursday for its digital coverage of last year’s elections. The awards honor “outstanding achievements” in multimedia journalism and are “among the most prestigious in broadcast and digital news.”

In addition to covering everything from the Philadelphia mayoral race to the New Jersey General Assembly elections, WHYY News also provided stories translated into Chinese, Arabic and Spanish. The languages were chosen based on the relationships the organization grew with the News and Information Community Exchange (N.I.C.E.) program, which is funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund.

WHYY President and CEO Bill Marrazzo said in a statement that “the vitality of WHYY’s news services, across all of its distribution platforms, is not an academic endeavor.”

“It is all about providing the citizen’s of the Tri-State area with an undeniably trusted source of information that enables them to engage fully in the well being of their community,” Marrazzo said.

Vice President of News and Civic Dialogue Sarah Glover cited the election of Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, the first Black woman to be chosen by voters for the job, as a key part of WHYY News’ election coverage and the work its journalists did.

“Grateful for the recognition of the WHYY newsroom’s due diligence in chronicling the historic election of Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia’s 100th mayor and the first Black woman and female to become mayor,” Glover said. “The audio and digital stories produced and notable distribution efforts, including multilingual publishing, was a team effort. WHYY News is grateful to be awarded a National Murrow Award for Excellence in Innovation.”

WHYY News was awarded five 2024 Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards earlier this year.

A full list of this year’s award winners can be found here.