Wichita Eagle win prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for documentary on Marion raid

Journalism contests often require a lot of paperwork to enter, but the Edward R. Murrow Award is so prestigious, there’s a one-hour webinar to watch before entering.

“I watched it, and I’m glad I did — because we won a Murrow,” said Eagle visuals editor Jaime Green.

She and visual journalist Travis Heying directed and edited the documentary, “Unwarranted: The Senseless Death of Journalist Joan Meyer.”

The 38-minute film, which also was nominated for a regional Emmy, focuses on Meyer, the 98-year-old journalist who died a day after a police raid on her family’s newspaper, the Marion Record, and her home.

“She died heartbroken,” Green said.

“It’s a story about an attack on journalism and the First Amendment,” Heying said. “I would think that that would resonate with judges.”

As journalists, the story was personal to Green, who still gets emotional discussing what happened to Meyer, and Heying, who is from a small town not unlike Marion.

The story also was a challenge to tell with seven and a half hours of police body camera footage from the day of the raid along with hours of interviews Heying and Green shot.

“Anytime you have that much stuff in the notebook, it’s a little bit harder to parse through it in a way that can be easily understood by people,” Heying said.

From the beginning, Green said Eagle executive editor Michael Roehrman helped find the themes in the story.

His input as the documentary’s producer “was just invaluable,” she said.

Also important, she noted, was the film’s score, which was created by her husband, Carter, a musician who owns Greenjeans Studios in Wellington.

There have been a half-dozen or so public screenings of the documentary, including one in Marion this week.

“They were all really grateful that we made the film,” Green said of Marion’s residents. “They said it’s nice to have a document of this event, and they all hoped it wouldn’t happen again, not only in Marion but anywhere else.”

She’s heard from at least one out-of-state group that wants to show it as well.

“I love that this is being used as an educational tool.”

Heying said awards like the Murrow and Emmy typically are associated with radio and TV.

“That’s kind of a new frontier for us.”

The Radio Television Digital News Association said it received more than 5,000 entries for the national awards this year.

Green and Roehrman both noted the significance of a small regional staff being recognized alongside so many nationally recognized media outlets.

“This contest was at the national level, and other winners in Small Digital Organization included ProPublica, The 19th, The City and Columbia Journalism Investigations, so we’re among august company,” Roehrman said in an e-mail to The Eagle newsroom Thursday afternoon.

Or, as he put it more simply in an interview about the Murrow: “This is a big deal.”

This story was originally published August 15, 2024 at 5:16 PM.