KGVO News partner Maritsa Georgiou with NBC Montana has received the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for excellence in television political journalism.

Georgiou spoke to KGVO about the award.

“I won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in television, political journalism, and it's through the Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, which is part of the Norman Lear Center at USC,” said Georgiou. “It's just an honor.”

Georgiou said her story about the removal of blue post office boxes garnered national attention.

“We had the United States Postal Service story with the blue boxes last summer and we worked on that and it gained quite a bit of national traction,” she said. “Then late last year, I received an email from the Lear Center that said, ‘Hey, we saw this story. We think it would really fit well into one of our categories. You should enter it’, and so I did. We were not really expecting to win it and it was quite a lovely surprise.”

The Cronkite award is certainly not the first for Georgiou, as she has also garnered statewide honors for her reporting.

“In 2019 I won the E.B. Craney Award for Montana Television Broadcaster of the Year,” she said. “That year also in our station group I think we picked up five Craney Awards that year and some of it was for my reporting on this and some of the issues that Missoula was facing with the meth epidemic which is something that is still a topic that is very close to my heart.”

Georgiou became the envy of Montana broadcasters when she scored a half-hour one-on-one on camera interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“I reached out to my contact who I worked with on the Dr. Birx and Dr. Redfield interview and just asked, ‘is this something that would be possible’? not expecting a yes,” she said.  “They got back to me within two or three days and set it up and they said you'll have a half hour with him and I was shocked. I was just blown away, but it went by very fast and I will say that's probably the most nervous I've ever been an interview.”

Georgiou is a regular contributor to the NBC Montana newscasts.

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