OU journalism students honored

University of Oklahoma senior Elizabeth Sims and recent OU graduate Macee Beheler were part of a multi-university in-depth journalism collaboration that won the 2018 Student Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Digital Reporting.

“Troubled Water,” a 2017 multimedia investigation inspired by the lead crisis in Flint, Michigan, was produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program based at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Twenty-nine student journalists from 18 universities participated.

The winners will be recognized at the Edward R. Murrow Awards gala Oct. 22 in New York City.

As part of the News21 program, Sims and Beheler, students from OU’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, received financial support from the Oklahoma-based Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. They were among the 29 journalists who traveled across the country to conduct hundreds of interviews, review thousands of documents, build databases and document the scope of water contamination nationwide.