2015 J-School Emmy Award Winners

Journalists who have made their way into millions of homes in the past year via news videos and documentaries made their way to Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall in New York on a warm, September evening to celebrate the 36th annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards.

Six UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism alumni were among the nominees, and J-School grads won four awards overall.

Bret Sigler (’03) won in the category of Outstanding News Editing for his work with The New York Times’ Retro Report piece titled, “Go or No Go: The Challenger Legacy.”

Jonathan Jones (’05) and J-School lecturer T. Christian Miller were part of the team that produced the documentary, “Firestone and the Warlord,” for PBS Frontline. It earned them two Emmys in Outstanding Long Form Investigative Journalism and Outstanding Research.

Jason Spingarn-Koff (’01) was also recognized as part of the team that won the New Approaches Emmy for Arts, Lifestyle and Culture. Spingarn-Koff, former curator of The New York Times Op Docs, won as an executive producer for the Times’ “Notes on Blindness.”

The festivities weren’t limited to the awards show. On its eve, J-School alumni from the classes of 2003 through 2013 gathered to greet old friends, meet new ones, and celebrate the nominees among them.

Those high spirits carried on at the awards ceremony the following evening, when the evolution of modern media consumption was a common theme. Sigler was surprised by his victory, saying the Retro Report series “was just digitally-based, and it was going up against more traditional broadcast entities. I think I expected one of the more established entities to win.”

Sigler’s piece examined the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle accidents, and how what he calls “organizational dysfunction” likely played a role in the disasters. “If you dig deeper,” he said, “you realize there were plenty of places along the way where things could have been avoided.”

The Emmys also recognized projects for their innovation and unique approaches to storytelling. Spingarn-Koff earned one such award for “Notes on Blindness,” a New York Times video that illustrated the audio recordings of one man as he plunged into darkness.

Miller and Jones worked together on “Firestone and the Warlord,” which sought to understand the relationship between the tire company and the man behind Liberia’s civil war, Charles Taylor.

Jones began reporting the project as a postgraduate fellow in the J-School’s Investigative Reporting Program (2008-2009). When the film was recognized with an Emmy for Outstanding Research, Jones thanked his wife Anna Sussman (’05) for moving with him to Liberia to fully investigate the story.

J-School Associate Dean Joan Bieder says she was delighted to be able to attend the event and reconnect with former students producing quality work. “Despite the criticism of the media, there are impressive news features, breaking news coverage, and documentaries out there,” Bieder says. “To know that our students are part of today’s high-quality journalism is thrilling and very gratifying.”

*Sachi Cunningham (’05) attended the Emmys to celebrate the nomination of the PBS Frontline documentary Rise of ISIS, on which she worked from Iraq. Daffodil Altan (’04), Tommy Nguyen (’05) and Sweta Vohra (’10) were also nominated for their work.

By Allie George (’17)