NEW ORLEANS — Members of the Eyewitness News team were honored with eight Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards on Saturday, including an award for overall news excellence.
WWL-TV was honored with more nominations than any other New Orleans television station. The virtual awards ceremony honored work from broadcasters in Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Puerto Rico.
WWL-TV’s news excellence Emmy honored the staff’s overall efforts in covering breaking news, features, multi-part series and investigative reporting over the past year.
The entry include highlights from the investigative series “Stench of Failure,” “Standard of Care,” “Mystery in Ashes,” “Global Wildlife Center: Paradise Lost?,” “Taken for a Ride” and “Highway Robbery” as well as the special series “Treme: Death of a Neighborhood, Survival of a Culture” and “The Forgotten East.”
Anchor/investigative reporter Katie Moore and photographer/editor Derek Waldrip won an Emmy in the category of news special, for “Mystery in Ashes,” which chronicled the mystery surrounding the 2017 death of Nanette Krentel, the wife of a St. Tammany Parish fire chief.
Moore and Waldrip were also nominated in the investigative reporting category for “Standard of Care,” their series of investigative reports on coronavirus deaths at Louisiana nursing homes.
Waldrip and anchor/reporter Karen Swensen won two regional Emmy awards. One honored their entry in the human interest category for “Rescue and Recovery.” The story chronicled Jefferson Parish firefighter Danny Ziegler, who was badly burned and left in a coma after fighting a Metairie condominium fire, but later recovered.
Swensen and Waldrip also won a second Emmy in the religion category for “Miracle Baby,” about a local child’s unexplained recovery from a serious illness, which has led some to call his healing a miracle attributed to Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos, who is being considered for canonization in the Roman Catholic Church.
Investigative reporter David Hammer and photographer/editor T.J. Pipitone were awarded an Emmy in the environmental reporting category for “Stench of Failure,” a series of reports highlighting mismanagement that led to a sickening smell from the Jefferson Parish landfill.
Anchor Eric Paulsen and photographer/editor Steve Wolfram won an Emmy in the arts and entertainment category for their series of reports, “New Orleans' Cuba Connection.” Earlier this year, the pair traveled to Cuba on a cultural exchange trip with local musicians and students affiliated with the Trombone Shorty Foundation.
Producer Caegan Moore also earned an Emmy in the arts/entertainment category for the locally-produced program, “Ya Mama N'em.”
Photographer/editor Adam Copus was honored with an Emmy for news video editing. He was also nominated in two other categories for his work with anchor/reporter Charisse Gibson.