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Millersville alumni Rebecca “Becca” Knier ‘13 and Donald “Don” Yeager ‘11 are setting the bar high after receiving Regional Emmy Awards for their work in journalism.
The winners of the Regional Emmy Awards for 2024 were announced. Don Yeager won the Emmy for the Mid-Atlantic Region Evening News (Larger Market) as a senior producer along with his team from FOX29 News. Becca Knier won the Emmy for the National Capital Chesapeake Bay Region Politics Government – News as a photographer/editor along with her team from WUSA9.
This is not Knier’s first Regional Emmy, but she expresses that the excitement of this achievement has not left her.
“You’re watching all of the nominees go by and your heart is just pounding every time,” says Knier, who currently works as an investigative photojournalist at InvestigateTV.
Her work on the story about a historic cemetery in Potomac, Md. that serves as a final resting place for Black people who were enslaved or freed Black people, won her the prestigious award. The cemetery was accidentally sold and used as a dumping ground until descendants of the spoken deceased spoke up. Knier touched on the day they spoke with one of the descendants and recalled how the rain added to the emotion she captured on camera.
“We can always push the date to shoot the interview, and it was such an impactful story that we were going to shoot this in the rain and interview her in the rain and walk with her through this cemetery and it just added to all the natural sound happening and all the emotion,” says Knier.
Before her work at WUSA9, Knier worked at FOX43 News following an internship she completed during her last year at MU.
Yeager, along with his colleagues at Fox 29 News Philadelphia, won the Emmy for their coverage of the capture of Danelo Cavalcante, a killer who escaped Chester County Prison. The story was viewed nationwide.
In January following his graduation from MU, Yeager became a producer at CBS 21 for almost five years before taking his position at Fox 29.
