Alex Stone, shown at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July , left KOA in Denver to become a national correspondent for ABC in Los Angeles

Many journalists retire from radio without ever having won a national honor, especially one as noted as the Edward R. Murrow Award.

At age 23, Alex Stone (’03) just won his second. “Plenty of us here have never gotten such a prestigious award,” said Kathy Walker, the news director at KOA Radio in Denver and Stone’s supervisor there until his departure for a network job in August.

“Alex is just special,” Walker said. “He’s one of a kind in our industry. He has an uncanny ability to recognize solid angles, and he’s an excellent interviewer. He loves his job, and it shows.”

Stone reported for KOA Radio for the past five years while he worked toward his Broadcast News degree at the School. On Oct. 4, he began working as a national correspondent for ABC News in Los Angeles. He said he expects to be covering mostly breaking news.

Murrow awards, given by the Radio-Television News Directors Association, or RTNDA, are considered among the most prestigious honors in electronic journalism.

“This is an outstanding achievement for any journalist, but for someone this early in his career, it’s remarkable,” said Associate Dean Meg Moritz, head of the Broadcast sequence.

Stone won his first Murrow award in 2002, when he was a junior at the School. The prize, in the large-market radio category for investigative reporting, honored a series on faulty security at Denver International Airport. He shared the award for the series titled “A DIA Security Report Card: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” with Bob Newman, KOA’s security expert.

In the series, Stone and Newman anonymously investigated security procedures at DIA shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Bob and I pushed the limits just weeks after 9/11 to see how tight airport security truly was during that tense time,” Stone said. “We parked in so-called secure areas, tried to look suspicious to see if police would question us – they didn’t – walked through open doors into secure baggage areas, found gaps in the secure fencing, and were never stopped.

“The airport refused to comment on the piece until it aired and caused a stir. What they didn’t seem to understand is that if we could find the security lapses, the terrorists could also.”

He won the Murrow award in the same category this year for reporting on problems with Colorado’s Emergency Alert System. He reported that local officials thought the state activated the system, and the state thought the responsibility was that of the federal government. “Nobody really knew how to activate it,” he said.

“In both series he did a great job of exposing holes in security, which was important information locally and nationally,” Walker said.

Stone said he didn’t expect to win either award and was anticipating bad news when Walker asked him into her office.

“It’s a huge honor to be recognized by such an outstanding organization as the RTNDA,” he said.

Stone said he was first inspired to become a journalist when he was 6 and visited CNN headquarters in Atlanta with his parents. He began working for KSRO in his hometown of Santa Rosa, Calif., when he was 12 through a teen news program.

“My voice was so high-pitched I sounded like a woman,” he said.

He continued working at the station throughout high school, waking up at 3 a.m. for the morning news show before going to classes. He said he loved reporting, even though he was nicknamed “Miss Stone.” Assistant Professor Lee Hood (MA ’97, Ph.D. ’01), who worked with Stone while he studied at the School, said he now has an ideal voice for broadcasting. “Alex just has a level of maturity. You’d never expect that he’s as young as he is,” she said. “Some kids are in soccer, others are in news.”

Stone also was the first runnerup for ABC Radio National Individual Reporter of the Year in 2002. He was nominated for a series of national ABC reports on the summer wildfires, airport security problems, flooding, a tornado, downtown riots, a plane crash and other stories.