WVTF Public Radio / RADIO IQ's Sandy Hausman receives three prestigious journalism awards

WVTF Public Radio / RADIO IQ's Sandy Hausman will receive a national award for investigative reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists.  

Hausman, the station's Charlottesville bureau chief, will accept the honor on June 21 at the National Press Club in Washington.

WVTF’s entry was one of 1,700 received by the society from newspapers, broadcasters, networks and websites. Hausman’s report “Naming the Fralin,” explored the questionable way in which a member of the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors secured naming rights to the university's art museum.

In addition, the station was recently honored with two first place awards in the Radio Television Digital News Association's 2013 Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards program. The winning entries, both produced by Hausman, were:

• Continuing Coverage Category: Crisis on Campus: The Fall and Rise of Teresa Sullivan
• News Series Category: Hazardous Hospitals, a week-long series on hospital acquired infection.  

The regional awards program covers media outlets in Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Delaware. Regional winners automatically become eligible for the national awards competition to be held this summer.

With Good Reason, a program produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and aired on WVTF and RADIO IQ, also received regional Murrow Award top prize for use of sound. Associate Producer Kelley Libby traveled to Richmond to cover the largest folk festival of its kind, in which teams from black fraternal organizations wowed spectators with their unique dancing style

Hausman joined the station in 2008 after honing her radio skills in Chicago. Since then, she's won several national awards for her reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Radio, Television and Digital News Association and the Public Radio News Directors' Association. She reports extensively on issues of concern to Virginians and has traveled across the world to tell her stories.

Hausman received her bachelor's degree from Cornell University and has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Michigan.

The Radio Television Digital News Association has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. Murrow's pursuit of excellence in journalism embodies the spirit of the awards that carry his name, and recipients demonstrate the spirit of excellence that he made a standard for the broadcast news profession. RTDNA is the largest professional organization devoted exclusively to electronic journalism and represents local and network news professionals in broadcasting, cable, and other digital media in more than 30 countries.

Founded in 1909, the Society of Professional Journalists is dedicated to the perpetuation of a free press. To ensure the concept of self-government outlined by the U.S. Constitution continues into future centuries, The society believes American citizens must be well informed in order to make decisions regarding their lives and their communities.