When the Radio-Television News Directors Association gathers later this month to honor the best electronic journalism of the past year, it will have plenty to celebrate. The organization hosts the 37th Edward R. Murrow Awards and RTNDA Unity Awards Oct. 15 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York."This year has been great for journalism," said RTNDA Chairman Bill Roswell, director of digital news and media at KYW Newsradio in Philadelphia. "More people are aware of the Murrow Awards, and each year the number of entries keeps growing and growing."Award presenters include CNN’s Anderson Cooper, NBC News’ Natalie Morales, ABC News’ David Muir, NPR’s Michele Norris and CBS News’ Harry Smith. NBC News President Steve Capus will accept his network’s award for overall excellence, and CBS producer Michael Radutzky will accept the news documentary award for the network’s "60 Minutes" story on the Duke rape case.Murrow Awards Committee Chair Kathy Walker, who is the news director at KOA Radio, said this has been a banner year for submissions and judging. The 79 awards for 52 news organizations were selected from an initial pool of 3,150 entries from 580 news organizations."The Murrow Awards have grown as a prestigious event because of the legacy of Edward R. Murrow and because of the explosion of broadcast outlets," Ms. Walker said. "We have five TV stations in markets where there used to be three. We have network entries from a broad array of people doing good journalism outside the traditional bastions of journalists. Because of the proliferation of media, a lot of interesting things are happening."It’s been exciting to hear the quality of the work being done, from markets where you wouldn’t picture that people are doing investigative and documentary stories. It’s now the top 200 markets where we’re seeing good journalism, not the top 10," she added.

One change implemented this year was to double the number of judges, from every region in the country. "We involved many more members as judges, and that really made the Murrow Awards process very, very rich," said Ms. Walker. "The whole judging process was a great example of how journalists feel about the prestige of the Murrow Awards. People understand the critical nature of judging the best of the best that our industry has to offer. The Murrow Awards have grown so much that we needed to do this. This is a sign of our success."The process for choosing additional judges began with seeking out former Murrow Award winners and other outstanding RTNDA members. "We looked for people we really considered to be premier examples of RTNDA members—great reporters, great newsroom leaders who have experience with the Murrow Award process," said Ms. Walker. "We asked them if they would help us, and the answer was a resounding yes. Everyone said this is important."Unlike last year, when news coverage related to Hurricane Katrina dominated, there was no overriding theme or story this year, Ms. Walker said. "We saw wonderful diversity in the entries and great examples of broadcast journalism."The awards honor major networks, large-market stations and small-market stations. In the TV network/syndication service category, NBC won seven awards, followed by three for CBS, two for CNN and one for ABC. In the large-market TV category, KYW in Philadelphia won for overall excellence; in small-market television, KVUE in Austin, Texas, won for overall excellence. For overall excellence, the radio network/ syndication service award went to CBS Radio News; large-market radio went to WBAL-AM in Baltimore; and small-market radio went to KFDI-FM in Wichita, Kan.