KOSU’s agriculture and rural affairs reporter Xcaret Nuñez was part of a Harvest Public Media award-winning effort in covering drought in 2022.

In a collaboration of Harvest Public Media and the Kansas News Service, Nuñez and reporters David Condos and Elizabeth Rembert won best radio news series for their stories about how drought affected the Great Plains region.

The Murrow Awards are given out every year by the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), and are among the most prestigious prizes in broadcast journalism.

The series won in Region 5, and includes stations from Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa.

The series highlighted issues from across the region caused by drought, putting specific focus on the drawdown of Canton Lake to bring billions of gallons of water to Oklahoma City and Lake Hefner.

With half of the country trapped in drought and climate scientists warning of a hotter, drier region west of the Mississippi, Harvest Public Radio and the Kansas News Service collaborated on a look at the far-ranging effects in the Great Plains. Reporters talked to climatologists and ranchers, farmers and water officials to see how the region and its economy have to pivot now and in the next half-century.

The drought series will automatically move onto the national Murrow competition.

Nuñez joined KOSU in June 2022 as a corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative that places emerging journalists in newsrooms across the country.