Public radio reporter Stephen Smith, a Perrysburg native and 1978 graduate of Maumee Valley Country Day School, has received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast journalism.
Smith and Michael Montgomery's National Public Radio stories titled Massacre at Cuska: Anatomy of a War Crime won duPont's Golden Baton, its highest award. The broadcasts recounted a village attack during the war in Yugoslavia.
Smith's stories, which first aired last February on All Things Considered, were the result of eight months of interviews with victims and members of the Serbian death squad that invaded the town of Cuska in 1999 and killed 41 unarmed civilians.
“During the heat of the so-called `ethnic cleansing campaign,' I thought we should choose one place and try to find out what happened there,” he said, “and then follow the events through until we found out if international justice lived up to its name.”
Silver Baton winners, announced Wednesday in New York, included ABC's Nightline's AIDS in Africa and PBS' New York: A Documentary Film.
Massacre, which was produced by American RadioWorks, the documentary arm of Minnesota Public Radio, can be heard online at www.americanradioworks.org.