T-Squared: Texas Tribune wins two national Edward R. Murrow Awards

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The Radio Television Digital News Association announced today that The Texas Tribune has won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards for overall excellence and for breaking news coverage of the May 24, 2022, mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde.

This was the second year in a row in which the Tribune was recognized for overall excellence among large digital news organizations, a highly competitive category that includes The New York Times, ProPublica, USA Today and The Washington Post.

“The Edward R. Murrow Awards serve as a testament to the unwavering dedication of journalists who illuminate the world with their stories,” the association’s president and chief executive, Dan Shelley, said in a statement. “These awards celebrate not just excellence, but the very essence of journalism that shapes our understanding of events and fosters a more informed society.”

For the award for overall excellence, we entered our coverage of the Uvalde shooting, abortion restrictions, fundraising by Gov. Greg Abbott, the 2022 statewide elections, transgender children and the intersection of climate change and mental health.

The Tribune published nearly 200 stories last year about the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde — the second-deadliest shooting at an elementary, middle or high school in the nation’s history. For the award for breaking news, we entered stories on the repeated loosening of gun laws by Texas lawmakers, the numbing cycle of pain and grief that has become routine in communities affected by mass shootings, calls by Republicans to arm teachers and put more police in schools and the grief experienced in Uvalde, a largely working-class Hispanic city of around 16,000 people. In the aftermath of the shooting, Congress adopted the first significant federal gun legislation since 1996.

Along with our front-line journalists and their editors, I am especially grateful to Ayan Mittra, our senior managing editor, and Tara Ballew, our grants and awards manager, for their hard work preparing our entries for these and other journalism awards. While we don’t do our work with an eye toward prizes, we feel deeply gratified to be recognized by our peers in journalism and to be associated with the legacy of Edward R. Murrow, whose courageous reporting on World War II and on the McCarthy era set a standard of excellence for American journalism.

The winners will be celebrated at the Edward R. Murrow Awards Gala on Oct. 9 in New York.

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