WEIU TV News Watch, Eastern’s student news station, was nominated for its second Emmy Mid-America Tuesday.

The nomination was awarded for the newscast given during the spring 2010 semester on Feb. 8.

“It was a winter weather heavy show,” said Kathleen Jones, the producer and anchor of the nominated show.

The Emmy organization made the announcement of the nominations on Facebook.

“We kept hitting refresh, and we couldn’t scroll down to our category fast enough,” said Kelly Runyon, the news director of WEIU TV.

In March, the Emmy Mid-America chapter began to solicit for entries.

Runyon said the News Watch entry was chosen for the different items the students completed within it.

“There was a lot of live elements,” Runyon said. “It was fast paced and was well executed from the anchors to production.”

The students who were a part of the crew during the newscast said it was a mixture of everything that made the show turn out the way it did.

“Few things were scripted,” Jones said. “We constantly were updating with Mike (Gismondi) live in the weather judging what was going on from what he had seen with his own eyes.”

Dustin Tylman, the technology director for the nominated show, agreed with Jones.

“A lot of weaving was done, and in a live show, at least I had never done that before,” Tylman said.

Jones said her hometown is within the regional Emmy chapter.

“I’ve wanted to do this my whole life and to be on the same list with some of the same St. Louis shows that I grew up watching is amazing,” Jones said.

For last year’s nomination, News Watch won the award unopposed; however, this year the cast is against the Missouri School of Journalism.

Tylman and Jones were not as involved with the first nominated show as the second, but Zach Nugent was a reporter and producer of both of the nominated shows.

“It’s a big deal we got this again because it proves it wasn’t just a fluke,” Nugent said.

Jones, Tylman and Nugent said it could not have happened without the teamwork of the crew.

“Our news director was even gone that day so if we didn’t trust each other that show would not had gone so smoothly,” Nugent said.

Though the station has been nominated for the second time, the honor has the same meaning to the news staff.

“We never take awards for granted,” Runyon said.

With some of the students working 35 hours to make the show work everyday, Jones said she feels this is a great way to validate the work they have put in.

“The Emmy organization has a reputation for selecting the best and so to have that recognition whether we win or not is really good,” Jones said.

However, getting awareness about the station to the campus and community is what the student journalists hope to get from the nomination.

“I don’t think WEIU gets near enough credit,” Jones said. “Too many students don’t even know what WEIU is.”

“I’m from Charleston and I didn’t even know about the station until I started classes here,” Tylman said.

The awards ceremony is at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 7 in St. Louis at the Renaissance Grand Hotel.

“The Emmy organization is very protective of their reputation, anything they put their name on is solid journalism,” Runyon said. “So this shows that the University as a whole is great because you can’t have a top notch program without top notch administration.”

Kayleigh Zyskowski can be reached at 581-7943 or

at [email protected].