WWL-TV (CBS) New Orleans reports the death of former News Director and Assistant General Manager Phil Johnson. He was 80.
The station won three Peabody Awards for documentaries that Johnson produced during his 39 years at WWL. When he retired in 1999, Johnson had written and delivered editorials on the station for 37 consecutive years, then hailed as the longest-running series of any TV station in America.
The obituary posted by WWL detailed other awards:
During nearly four decades in local news, Johnson won scores of other awards and honors, including an Emmy award. He was inducted into the Greater New Orleans Broadcasters Association’s New Orleans Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1996, and in 1997, earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Press Club of New Orleans.
In 1999, Johnson’s alma mater, Loyola University New Orleans awarded him its Integritas Vitae Award, the university’s highest honor for an individual “with a high moral character in a lifetime of unselfish service without expectation of material reward of public recognition.” Later, Johnson donated his lifetime work, consisting of the original manuscripts of more than 10,000 broadcast editorials to the university’s Monroe Library.
