BEATS
The Pine Belt - The Internet
PHONE
601-450-8360
EMAIL
dmcraney@wdam.com
David McRaney is the director of new media at WDAM, but he also files reports and appears on live television when needed.
He is also one of the producers of The Green Couch Sessions, a weekly music television program.
If it goes online, McRaney is responsible for it. Often, McRaney helms a live blog and interacts with viewers on behalf of WDAM.
David graduated from The University of Southern Mississippi in 2007 with a degree in journalism and worked as a newspaper reporter until joining WDAM in 2008.
Before that, David owned two pet stores, worked construction, waited tables, installed electrical control systems and sold leather coats.
In 2006, McRaney was named one of the top 10 college journalists in the nation and earned a $10,000 scholarship from the Scripps Howard Foundation.
He is a two-time winner of the William Randolph Hearst Award, once for feature writing and once for opinions writing. He is also the recipient of the 2007 Elliot Chaze Journalism Scholarship and the 2006 Mississippi Press Association's awards for best photo and story combination and best general news story.
In 2007, McRaney earned the South Eastern Journalism Conference award for opinions writing as well as winning the on-site competition in the same category. He earned the 2007 MPA awards for both the best general interest column and best news story. He earned the 2006 MPA Collegiate award for best feature story, and the SEJC award for special event reporting for his work covering Hurricane Katrina.
In 2009, he received the Mississippi AP award for best Web site.
McRaney served one year as the executive editor for the campus newspaper of The University of Southern Mississippi, The Student Printz, in addition to serving one semester as the news editor and one semester as the managing editor. The newspaper won both general excellence and best editorials at the 2007 Mississippi Press Association awards along with 19 other individual awards for his staff.
He was the president of the Society of Professional Journalists on campus as well as a member of the Kappa Tau Alpha honor society.
McRaney has also written extensively for The Hattiesburg American, The Lamar Times, The Advertiser News and The Petal News covering local hard news and generating weekly columns.
In 2005, McRaney contributed 12 personality profiles of local eccentrics and business owners for Profile: Lamar County.
He is married to Amanda McRaney, who works at The University of Southern Mississippi as a digital reference librarian.
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