McCoy wins BEA Best of Competition Award

Barney McCoy
Barney McCoy

Barney McCoy, an associate professor of journalism is receiving a Best of Competition award from the Broadcast Education Association in the radio hard news reporting category. He is among 15 faculty and students from across the United States whose work will be honored at the 9th Annual BEA Best of Festival King Foundation Awards Ceremony in Las Vegas, Nev., on April 11.

McCoy's entry, "Kosovo Elections: Democracy in Transition," was broadcast on NET radio. It focused on Kosovo's national election held on Dec. 10, 2010. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. McCoy lectured at the Kosovo Institute of Journalism and Mass Communications in March 2010 and is currently producing a documentary about the country.

McCoy has won two prior awards from the BEA. In 2009, he won a Best of Competition award in the faculty documentary long form category. In 2010, McCoy, and advertising professor Bruce Mitchell, were awarded an award of excellence in the faculty documentary long form category.

The Best of Festival winners for 2011 were selected from a pool of 913 entries, from 143 colleges and universities in the following competition categories: audio, video, documentary, interactive multimedia, news, scriptwriting, sports, and two-year and small colleges.

The BEA Festival of Media Arts is an international refereed exhibition of faculty creative activities and a national showcase for student work. The festival provides a venue for exhibition of winning submissions, including recognition of project authors, through showcase and awards sessions held during the annual convention of BEA in Las Vegas, Nev. The festival seeks to enhance and extend creative activities, teaching, and professional standards in broadcasting and other forms of electronically mediated communication.

Before joining UNL in 2006, McCoy was a fulltime journalist for 27 years where he worked as a television and print news reporter, photographer, producer, and anchor. He has worked at WIBW-TV in Topeka, Kan.; KCTV in Kansas City, Mo.; WKBD-TV in Detroit, Mich.; WILX-TV in Lansing, Mich.; WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio, and has been a contributing reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, Associated Press, CBS, CNN and the Ohio News Network.

McCoy teaches convergence, investigative and computer-assisted reporting, broadcast news writing, information gathering, beginning and depth-reporting classes.

He has won six Emmy awards and several other citations for journalistic excellence.