FERRANDO HONORED BY LAB FOR BREAKING NEWS

Former Southeastern Channel news reporter-anchor Erika Ferrando has been honored by the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters (LAB) with a Prestige Award at its 2022 Prestige Awards Gala at the Roosevelt Hotel in Baton Rouge.  Ferrando, a television news reporter for WWL-TV Ch. 4 (CBS) in New Orleans, La. (DMA 50) for three years now, won the state’s top professional television award for “Breaking News” for a large market television station for her live coverage of the nursing home warehouse evacuation during Hurricane Ida. It was Ferrando’s third Prestige Award as tops among Louisiana television reporters.  As a news reporter-anchor for the Southeastern Channel’s national award-winning newscast, “Northshore News,” Ferrando became the LAB’s first-ever winner of “Student Broadcaster of the Year” out of all television and radio students in the state in 2014, starting an 8-year trend where a Southeastern Channel student broadcaster won the state’s top broadcaster six of the first eight years of the award.  Ferrando also won a Prestige Award for her “Uniquely Louisiana” story while working at KPLC-TV Ch. 7 (NBC) in Lake Charles, La. (DMA 173), her first stop after May 2014 graduation from Southeastern.  After working in Lake Charles for two years, Ferrando was hired by KTHV-TV Ch. 11  (CBS) in Little Rock, Ark. (DMA 59).  At KTHV-11 Ferrando won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for her feature story, “A Walking Miracle“.  She was also honored by the AP as “Best Solo Journalist” and by the Emmys with a nomination in the Mid-American Region of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.  After two years in Little Rock, Ferrando joined WWL-TV as a general assignment reporter and promptly won top awards given by the Associated Press Broadcasters and Media Editors, winning two 2019 awards in the Louisiana-Mississippi division for general news and feature stories. While at the Southeastern Channel, Ferrando won “Best in the South” recognition for news reporting from the Southeast Journalism Conference (eight states) and Mark of Excellence Awards Awards for news reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists.