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GLT Newsroom Awards

GLT's 3rd national Edward R. Murrow award recognized Charlie Schlenker's newswriting. The station competed in a field of 3,459 entries from several hundred news organizations from round the country. The station is one of 54 to actually win awards and GLT is the only Illinois Radio station to win a national Edward R. Murrow Award this year.

This latest recognition is on top of a number of other awards including a regional Edward R. Murrow and state wide Associated Press awards.

This year marks GLT's fourth year straight year for recognition from the Radio and Television News Directors Association with a regional award for bestnewswriting (which qualified Charlie for the national award). It's theseventh regional Edward R. Murrow Award won by GLT News since 2005, six of them by Charlie, who also won NATIONAL Murrows in 2005 and 2006. The regional contest includes entries submitted from four midwestern states--Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. This award is also automatically entered into the national contest with winners to be announced later this spring. 

The Illinois Associated Press has honored the WGLT News Department for Journalistic Excellence for the seventh consecutive year. This year no downstate radio station won more awards than GLT. For the third straight year, the only Illinois public radio station to win more acclaim than WGLT in Normal was prestigious Chicago Public Radio WBEZ.

WGLT won five awards in this year’s contest, three first place honors and two second. First place awards are: Best Reporter—Willis Kern, Best Newswriter–Charlie Schlenker, Best Newscast–3:54 P.M. GLT News. Second place awards went to Kern in the Best Newswriter category and to the GLT News team of Kern, Schlenker and Jim Browne for Outstanding News Operation. In the last five years the WGLT News Department has won 27 awards from the Associated Press for Journalistic excellence, and 50 overall awards in the last decade.