WESA and The Allegheny Front Collect 10 Golden Quill Awards, Regional Murrows and National Honors

The newsroom at 90.5 WESA and The Allegheny Front have collected a run of 2026 journalism honors across regional, state and national contests, according to Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corporation, the station's parent organization.

The biggest tally came from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania's Golden Quill Awards. The newsroom and The Allegheny Front won a combined 10 awards at the May 18 ceremony in Pittsburgh. WESA journalists were also nominated for more than 20 awards in the competition, which covers professional and student work from Western Pennsylvania and nearby counties in Ohio and West Virginia. Among the winners was Julia Maruca, Kiley Koscinski and Cindi Lash's spot breaking news coverage of the Clairton Coke Works explosion. Koscinski, Glynis Board and freelance photographer John Beale won in the news feature category for a story on families with autistic children struggling to find help. Jillian Forstadt won two Golden Quills for "Double jeopardy: From classroom to courtroom," in the education and enterprise/investigative categories.

Other Golden Quill winners from WESA included Koscinski for a story on Pitt medical students studying the healing power of sound with a Carnegie Mellon violinist, and Susan Scott Peterson for a podcast on how the 2018 synagogue attack affected the Jewish community. Peterson, Jakob Lazzaro and Katie Blackley won for a piece on local cuisine with global roots, and Jeremy Scott won in sports for coverage of the homecoming for the Johnstown Little League Softball champions.

The Allegheny Front won two audio awards. Reid Frazier won in the medical/health category for reporting on how federal rollbacks are keeping new clean air rules out of the Mon Valley. Frazier, Julie Grant, Kara Holsopple and Kathy Knauer won in science/environment for a special series on the Monongahela River. That series also took the "Best in Show" Ed King Memorial Award in Audio Journalism.

In May, the Radio Television Digital News Association gave WESA two Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards. Forstadt's "Double Jeopardy" series won in the news series category, and Peterson's series "King: A year in the life of a Pittsburgh public school" won for excellence in diversity, equity and inclusion. Murrow Awards go to stations rather than individuals. WESA competes in a region that includes large-market stations in New York and New Jersey, as well as Philadelphia and the rest of Pennsylvania. Regional winners advance automatically to the national contest, with winners due to be announced in August.

Forstadt and Peterson also won Robert L. Vann Awards from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for the same projects. Forstadt won in the enterprise/investigative category and Peterson in documentary. Reporters Kate Giammarise and Julia Maruca won in the news feature category for their examination of the Kingsley Association's financial issues. The Vann awards honor coverage of African American and African diaspora communities in Western Pennsylvania, western and central Ohio and parts of West Virginia.

The Public Media Journalists Association announced June 15 that WESA won one first-place and two second-place awards in its annual contest, which draws entries from 134 organizations nationwide and covers work produced in 2025. The first-place award, in the collaborative effort category, went to the "Mon Valley PRT Chronicles/Stories of Courage/Student Journalists" project, an ongoing partnership with the McKeesport Community Newsroom led by WESA Editor Glynis Board and MCN Director Martha Rial. Second-place awards went to Koscinski, Board and Beale for the autism story in the health/medical feature category, and to Peterson for the documentary "WESA Reports: KING (A Year in the Life of a Pittsburgh public school)." The awards will be presented at a July 21 ceremony.

The autism story was also a finalist for the Institute for Nonprofit News' Innys Award in the Insight Award for Visual Journalism category, large-organization division. The awards were presented June 16 at INN Days, the institute's national conference, held this year in Pittsburgh. The winner was Robert Gerhardt of The Trace, a national outlet covering gun violence, for a story on neighborhood groups working to rewrite Brownsville's legacy of violence.