The Peabody award is the TV-news equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize -- and Channel 7 is among the 2008 winners, along with CNN, Saturday Night Live and HBO's epic John Adams mini-series. The station was honored for "Failing the Children: Deadly Mistakes," a series of reports about children who died while supposedly being protected by the Denver Department of Human Services. The packages were assembled by correspondent John Ferrugia, producer Art Kane, producer Tom Burke, and photojournalist Jason Foster.
Ferrugia, as you may recall, was also the frontman for 7News' last Peabody-winning entry: a 2003 look into unbecoming conduct -- to put it mildly -- at the Air Force Academy. (Those pieces were predated by "The War Within," a Westword feature on the same topic by former staffer Julie Jargon that was also showered with awards.) And both Kane and Burke were deeply involved in "33 Minutes to 3-4 Right," a Tony Kovaleski-helmed exposé about delayed emergency-response times that was praised in this space on March 17. Resources may be tight at local television outlets these days, but Channel 7 hasn't given up its commitment to investigative work -- and it's reaping the benefits.
