Lakeland News wins four Sevareid Awards, including top newscast honor

Lakeland News was recognized with four Eric Sevareid Awards, including first place for top newscast in the small-market television division, a signal that its work continues to reach far beyond the studio and into the daily lives of Beltrami County viewers.

The awards were presented April 11 at the Midwest Journalism Conference at the InterContinental St. Paul Riverfront Hotel. Lakeland News competed against stations across the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association’s six-state region, which includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska.

Among the winning entries was Matthew Freeman’s Red Lake Students Get Leg Up on Learning Ojibwe, which earned first place and highlighted classroom efforts to keep the language alive for a new generation. Charlie Yaeger won first place in Sports Reporting for Lily Knute Keeps Family Legacy of Racing Alive at Bemidji Speedway, a story rooted in one of the area’s most familiar local venues. Yaeger also received an Award of Merit in Multi-Media Journalist/Solo Storyteller for a body of work produced during 2025.

The station’s June 23, 2025, 10 p.m. newscast also received an Award of Merit for coverage of the severe storm that hit Bemidji. Lakeland News said that broadcast was its first full newscast after the June 21 storm, which brought hurricane-force winds. CBS Minnesota reported that the windstorm carved a damage path about 10 miles wide through downtown Bemidji and the southern Lake Bemidji area, a scale of destruction that made local reporting essential for residents tracking outages, damage and recovery.

That mix of stories points to what Lakeland News does best for this region: cover emergencies, preserve local culture and follow the people and places that define life in and around Bemidji. In a market where one storm can take down trees, buildings and power lines across a wide swath of town, a newsroom that can turn around a full newscast quickly becomes part of the public safety response as well as the public record.

The Sevareid Awards are named for Eric Sevareid, the North Dakota-born, University of Minnesota-educated journalist who worked for CBS Radio and Television. Judged by journalists and educators from outside the region, the awards are designed to emphasize impartiality. For Lakeland News, the recognition shows that coverage of Red Lake, Bemidji Speedway and a major Bemidji storm was strong enough to stand out across the Upper Midwest.