The prestigious award honors the December 23, 2004, 8:04 a.m. newscast on NPR’s Morning Edition™, anchored and edited for IPR by Stan Sollars. Assisting Sollars were telecommunications students Alyssa Ivanson and Derek Tucker from NewsLink Indiana, Ball State’s news convergence program. “This particular newscast detailed the large storm that dumped heavy snow on most of our listening area,” said Sollars. “It had a comprehensive roundup of the latest weather, road conditions, closings and government actions such as snow emergencies, and a number of ‘how-to-get-through-the-storm’ stories I gathered and wrote in the hours before the storm.”

Sollars said the newscast was produced to help listeners deal with the storm and prepare for the arctic cold that followed. “I got interviews from authorities on human health, animal health, travel safety, local pre-storm shopping trends, and the latest word on the storm’s progress from forecasters at the National Weather Service,” he said. Ivanson conducted a phone interview with a state police officer in Connersville who said the snowfall was worse than the 1978 blizzard. Tucker called numerous county police and highway offices gathering road and snowfall information, including an interview with a Madison county plow driver. Both students also fielded calls to the newsroom. “We tallied snowfall and road information from listening-area counties like we were totaling up returns from an election,” Sollars said. Sollars believes the students’ involvement with the newscast illustrates “why NewsLink Indiana is so important” to the IPR listening area. “Our peers with RTNDA apparently agreed that our collaboration worked for our audience,” Sollars said. “I am proud to share the honor with our students.”

One of Sollars’ Morning Edition™ newscasts was recognized in 2000. The station’s news department has also received four regional Edward R. Murrow awards for Overall Excellence (1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003), as well as Best Spot News (2001), and Best Writing and Best Use of Sound (2003). IPR competes in RTNDA’s Region 7, which includes Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.

IPR News wins more awards
Last month IPR News won 10 awards from the Associated Press (Indiana Chapter) and five from Network Indiana, which counted with the RTNDA award announced earlier, brings the total of news awards for the year to 16. All but two went to senior news correspondent Brian Beaver.
At an April 3 banquet, IPR News accepted a total of 10 awards from the Associated Press (Indiana Chapter). Four days later Network Indiana presented the news team with five more.
In addition to the Best Reporter award (for the third straight year), Beaver won the following from the Associated Press:
• First-Place
Best News Series – “911 Call Center”
Best General News – “Women’s Build”
Best Enterprise Story – “Afghan Letters”
• Second-Place
Best Spot News Reporting – “Fatal House Fire”
Best General News – “Senior Games”
Best Enterprise Story – “Kids for K-9s”
• Honorable Mention
Best Use of Radio Sound – “White River Cleanup”
Best Continuous Coverage of a Single Event – “Martin Luther King Naming Controversy”
Stan Sollars and the IPR News team won an Honorable Mention from the AP for Best Newscast for the December 23, 2004 broadcast of Morning Edition.
Network Indiana awards
Network Indiana is a news, sports, and talk radio network that provides statewide coverage to a variety of Indiana radio stations. The following five awards in Radio News went to IPR:
• First-place
Best Newscast - Stan Sollars and the IPR News team (with Ball State telecommunications students Alyssa Ivanson and Derek Tucker from NewsLink Indiana) - for Dec. 23, 2004 Morning Edition broadcast
Best Spot News (Beaver) - “Fatal House Fire”
Best Use of Sound (Beaver) - “Women’s Build”
• Honorable Mention
Best Use of Sound (Beaver) – “Maxwell Tour”
Best General/Feature Report (Beaver) – “Van Fire Rescue”