Northwest Broadcast News Association

NBNA Announces 2012 Annual Awards

CPD — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:46:29 +0000

The Northwest Broadcast News Association is pleased to announce its annual journalism awards. Each year, NBNA honors the best journalism in its six-state region of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. This year, the organization honored radio and television stations with nearly 300 awards, given at its annual awards banquet on March 31st in the Twin Cities. The full list of awards is available by clicking the link below.

Full Awards List

In addition to the annual awards, the NBNA honored Iowa’s Dean Borg with the 2012 Charnley Award. Named after long-time University of Minnesota professor Mitchell V. Charnley, the award is given each year to an individual working, or with roots, in the six-state NBNA region, who has made outstanding contributions to the field of broadcast journalism.

Dean Borg’s distinguished broadcast journalism career extends over four decades, and includes reporting from throughout the United States and several other continents. He was graduated from Iowa State University as the “Outstanding Broadcast Journalist” in 1959, and later earned a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Iowa.

Borg worked as a reporter before becoming the news director of WMT radio and television stations in Cedar Rapids. From covering a devastating tornado that ripped through Charles City by phoning his reports back to WMT, to reporting directly from South Vietnam during the War, Borg has seen it all.

An experienced political journalist, he has covered the Iowa General Assembly and Governor’s office, as well as multiple presidential campaigns. His award-winning reporting from South Vietnam, Paris and the anti-war student riots at The University of Iowa continues as a historical reference to that era. While working at the UI, he developed innovative and effective communication programs that earned several awards for being best in the nation.

Since its inaugural broadcast in 1971, Borg has been a fixture on the “Iowa Press” program on Iowa Public Television. Borg serves as host and moderator for the weekly half-hour interview and news program. In addition, he’s hosted public affairs programs for over three decades, including a weekly in-depth report on the Iowa General Assembly. He has interviewed every president since Richard Nixon, and many of the men and women seeking the presidency.

In 2008, Borg became the recipient of the Jack Shelley Award, the highest award given by the Iowa Broadcast News Association. Iowa State has cited him as a Distinguished Alumnus, the highest award conferred by ISU to alumni.

Borg is currently Senior Producer/Correspondent for WSUI at the University of Iowa and a frequent contributor to National Public Radio (NPR). He is a native of Forest City, Iowa.

More information about Mitchell V. Charnley and the award that carries his name is available here.

The Latest Newsletter

nbna — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:32:13 +0000

Check out the latest version of the NBNA newsletter, arriving in newsrooms in early December. It has details about the how to enter the 2011 Eric Sevareid Awards, which for the first time will be conducted entirely online… forms, entries, judging… everything! We’re excited to offer this new and easy way to take part in the region’s premiere news reporting contest, honoring the best work of area journalists.

We’ve posted links to the complete contest rules and entry instructions on the Sevareid Awards page. As always, if you have any questions about the contest, how to enter or what we’ll need to make sure your entry will be accepted, contact us.

What’s in a name?

nbna — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:31:18 +0000

The board of directors of the Northwest Broadcast News Association has been considering a change to the name of the organization. As journalists, we are very conscious of the importance of words and how there is no substitute for the right words. As writers, we are mindful of our heritage. And as a forward-looking service organization, we want to ensure we continue to serve the changing needs of our members.

Some History
For more than 60 years, we have been an important resource for electronic journalists across the six-states are we serve. Regional journalism organizations like ours are not common across the country; most are either national, such as the Radio Television Digital News Association or are focused on a single state like the Iowa Broadcast News Association. Our current name reflects the both the geography and the era in which it was developed.

Northwest: Since before the civil war, states and territories like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa (or most areas north and west of Chicago, the largest city in our part of the still-growing nation) were popularly known as the “Northwest”. The “Midwest” was loosely defined as states like Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. But even by the time of our founding in the late 1940′s, the terms had become somewhat outdated, as the rest of the country viewed states like Washington, Idaho and Oregon as the Northwest. More people began thinking of our north-central states as the Midwest, or to avoid confusion with those south or east of Chicago, the phrase “Upper Midwest” is often used today to define states from Wisconsin to as far away as Montana. The term Northwest lingered in our vernacular for a long time, bolstered by dominant radio station WCCO in Minneapolis, which for decades called itself the “Good Neighbor to the Northwest”, and by the now-defunct Northwest Airlines which had been headquartered in Minnesota until being bought out by Atlanta-based Delta Airlines. The word Northwest confers a feeling of heritage but may have long since reached its peak of popularity to define our area. We are wondering if a change to the word Midwest or some other term might be more widely understood to indicate our geographic location, and have debated whether having a geographically-based name at all is useful.

Broadcast: While today, the word “broadcast” encompasses several delivery platforms, in 1948 it principally meant radio, which was then still the dominant method of electronic communication as television was still in its emerging days in post-war America and no one had conceived of the Internet. Most of our members were radio news managers in the early days, joined by their television brethren as the “new” medium gained acceptance. We still broadcast today, via radio, television, our computers and our mobile devices. Even thought the spell-checker on the computer on which this article is being typed doesn’t recognize them, new terms like “podcast” for audio and “vodcast” for video have come into more common usage for packaged programs delivered online. One of our partner organizations at the national level used to be called the Radio Television News Directors Association and recently changed their name to the Radio Television Digital News Association, both to reflect their membership policy opening from only news managers to all working electronic journalists (dropping “News Directors” from their name) and adding the word “digital” to reflect the newer media reaching consumers of our journalistic output.

News: The word “news” carries a wide variety of meanings. For some, the word “journalist” conveyed a mental image of someone writing for a newspaper rather than a broadcaster using the spoken word on radio and television. With the proliferation of the Internet as a source of news from both professional and citizen journalists the terms have become less strictly defined. In considering different possible names for the group, we are mindful that there are already several service organizations at the regional and national level that use the words “journalist” or “journalism” in their names.

Association: The word “Association” is probably the most common one used to define a trade-based group united for common purposes. For some it may suggest a political lobbying type of organization; for others it implies a broader agenda of advocacy and promotion of a profession. We use Association for our activities that advocate for, support and educate journalists and future journalists and we use ‘Foundation” for our fundraising arm.

Many Potential Choices
Many possible names and configurations have been suggested, leading to an understandably complex conversation about our mission, our audience and our future. Should we change or eliminate the geographic part of our name? With the Internet allowing our content to be consumed anywhere on the planet, is a geographic name needed or does it help define where our members live? Should we follow the lead of our RTDNA friends and update our name to include a broader electronic or digital reference? Or perhaps are broadcasters, even with their digital platforms, still our primary concern? Should we use news, journalism or another word to define our area of interest? Are we an Association, a Society or something else? No formal list of choices has been developed for discussion but many suggestions have been made over the past couple of years:

Midwest Broadcast News Association
Northwest Digital News Association
Midwest Digital News Association
Northwest Electronic Journalists Association
Midwest Electronic Journalism Association
Midwest News Association
Midwest Electronic Media Association
Upper Midwest News Association
Midwest Journalism Association
Midwest Digital Journalism Association
Digital News Association
Digital Media Association
Digital Journalism Association

And you could substitute the word Association above with any of these group names from the thesaurus if it made for a more pleasing sounding name or acronym to the ear: Alliance, club, coalition, confederation, congress, cooperative, federation, fellowship, guild, league, organization, partnership, society, syndicate are all group terms. Some have pointed out that while they have built many years of familiarity with their name, the acronym RTDNA is a tongue-twister… as is NBNA to some extent. Would NDNA, MDNA, MEJA, MJC, DNS or some other combination sound better? Will a different name sound to similar to another existing organization with a similar mission? Will people inside or outside our profession understand who we are? And as a secondary consideration, are things like website domain names or Twitter and Facebook user names available for whatever new name we choose? Or should we just leave it as it is?

We Want Your Input
What do you think about a name change? How best should we modernize and/or refocus our name to reflect our mission and goals? Which words do you think reflect the rapid changes in our profession and will have a meaning that will serve us well for the next 60 years? Please let us know in the comments section below or contact us to give us your thoughts. The board will be considering this issue at its next meeting with the hope of bringing a proposal for a vote of the membership at an upcoming convention. As you can see, it is a complex issue. We want your help to make the best decision we can.

Call for session ideas!

nbna — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:34:05 +0000

Leaders from the Midwest Journalism Conference’s member organizations met on October 1st in the Twin Cities to begin the planning process for the 2012 conference. The planning committee room was filled with great ideas for sessions and each group has been assigned the task of fine-tuning the topics for discussion, finding speakers and preparing for their audiences. The groups agreed to keep the registration price at the same level as last year, making the MJC one of the most affordable ways to get high-quality journalism training close to home.

The conference is seeking sponsors to help defray the costs to producing the event and provide the best possible seminars for our attendees. If you or your company would like to help sponsor this 2012 conference, please check out our Conference Sponsors page.

The basic Conference Schedule has been laid out and as individual sessions and speakers are confirmed, details will be added to the website. The planning committee will re-assemble on January 21st to finalize the sessions and work on

Do you have an idea for a session you’d like to see? Please Contact Us with your ideas as soon as possible.