Bloomberg wins OPC’s Morton Frank Award for “Blood River”

Bloomberg Green has won the Overseas Press Club‘s Morton Frank Award for “Blood River,” an audio series following a four-year quest to solve the murder of an environmental activist who led a protest movement against a proposed hydroelectric dam in Honduras.

The Morton Frank Award recognizes the best international business news reporting in TV, video, radio, audio or podcasts.

The award goes to Bloomberg’s Monte Reel, who reported and hosted the series and Topher Forhecz, who produced it. The first episode of “Blood River” debuted in July 2020. Bloomberg Green also published a feature story by Reel that accompanied the series.

The OPC judges wrote, “Through dramatic storytelling and deep reporting into the murder of an environmental activist in the Honduras, Bloomberg Green reveals (in a 7-part audio series) how corrupt corporate and government forces will do anything to get an international development project launched in that country.”

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.