For the fourth consecutive year, NBC News wins the Edward R. Murrow award for Overall Excellence, the RTDNA revealed this morning.  Here’s the video NBC News submitted which resulted in the Overall Excellence award.

NBC News also wins a Murrow for Video Newscast for their coverage of the Southern tornadoes last summer. And Bob Dotson‘s American Story wins the  Writing award.

ABC News will take home three Murrow Awards — including Video Breaking News Coverage of the death of Osama Bin Laden and Video Continuing Coverage for the Gabrielle Giffords story. Also, David Muir and the “World News” team win the Hard News reporting award for coverage of the famine in Somalia.

• TVSpy: Local newsrooms take home 2012 Murrows.

CBS News takes the awards for Video Feature Reporting for an Anderson Cooper story on “60 Minutes,” and for Video Investigative Reporting for this Sharyl Attkisson report on the “CBS Evening News.”

CNBC.com takes the award for best network TV website as well as the Video News Documentary award category for “Billions Behind Bars: Inside America’s Prison Industry.” CNN wins awards for Use of Video and Video News Series.

In all, 67 news organizations are being honored with 99 National Edward R. Murrow Awards. The awards will be presented at the RTDNA Awards Dinner in New York October 8.

The Society of Professional Journalists has announced the winners of the Sigma Delta Chi awards.

ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer” wins the Breaking News award for ABC’s coverage of the Japan earthquake and tsunami. ABC’s Brian Ross wins the Investigative Reporting award for his “Peace Corps: A trust betrayed.” Also, ABCNews.com, in conjunction with The Center for Public Integrity won an Investigative Reporting award for “Green energy: Contracts, connections and the collapse of Solyndra.”

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta and his team win a Documentary award for “Terror in the dust.” and CNN’s Freedom Project wins a Public Service award. CBS’s Scott Pelley wins for Feature Reporting for his “60 Minutes: Hard times generation.” And NBC’s Bob Dotson wins the Online Column Writing award for his American Story series on msnbc.com.

Judges chose the winners from more than 1,700 entries in categories covering print, radio, television and online. The awards recognize outstanding work published or broadcast in 2011. The complete list of winners is here.

Bob Dotson‘s long-running “American Story” feature for the “Today” show is being turned into a book. Dotson has been with NBC since 1975 when he joined WKYC in Cleveland. He’s reported from NBC’s Dallas and Atlanta bureaus before moving to New York where his “American Story” features have been a staple of “Today.”

Dotson, who’s won more than 100 awards for his writing, is the author of two books: “Make it Memorable,” for aspiring journalists; and the other a memoir, “In Pursuit of the American Dream.”

“What we know about America mostly comes from journalists who travel in herds, trailing politicians or camped out at big stories, pouncing on problems to repeat over and over,” Dotson says. “This book is for everyone who yearns to feel better about America again.”

Viking Press will publish “American Story with Bob Dotson.”

The Catholic Academy for Communication Arts Professionals has announced its 2010 Gabriel Award winners for “broadcasting and film that uplifts the human spirit”.

Television honorees include:

• NBC Nightly News won a Gabriel Award in the News/Informational-National Release category for its ongoing “Making a Difference” series.

• MSNBC’s December 24 “American Story with Bob Dotson” special earned a Certificate of Merit in the Documentary-National Release category.

The Academy is self-described as an association of professionals “involved in Catholic church-related communications and Catholic communicators working in secular organizations”.

Incidentally, earlier this month, NBC News issued an apology to the Catholic League for an incorrect headline related to Pope Benedict XVI.

As we cover day two of the NAB/RTDNA conference here in Las Vegas some quick snapshots of what’s going on. NBC News correspondent Bob Dotson discussed how he finds, interviews and assembles his “American Story with Bob Dotson” series for the Today show.

Around the same time as Dotson was speaking, we dropped in to the main ballroom at the Hilton Las Vegas as FCC chairman Julius Genachowski tried to calm the fears of a roomful of skeptical broadcasters about the government’s National Broadband Plan.

And below, a bulletin board — the old fashioned kind — already filled with resumes from hopeful future tvnewsers. There’s another full board nearby. The RTDNA conference attracts not just news managers but students hoping to get on their radar.

MSNBC will present a special hour-long “American Story with Bob Dotson” tonight at 8pmET. For more than three decades,
Dotson has been traveling around the U.S.A., on NBC’s dime, finding stories of people who are practically invisible but who’ve made great contributions to their communities. Dotson’s stories regularly appear on the “Today” show. This is the first year a one-hour special has been produced compiling the stories.

• Related: Bob Dotson tells other people’s stories for NBC News, but few of those stories are better than his own.

“They could certainly have me do 100 live shots rather than two or
three stories a month.”

The story after the jump…

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> The New York Post’s Cindy Adams describes, in general terms, Bill O’Reilly‘s upcoming book, “A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity,” from her “embargoed, not for sale, uncopyedited, bound manuscript.” O’Reilly’s “mantra” from the book: “Living well is not the best revenge. Succeeding in your career and humiliating your critics is.”

> The Today show’s Alaskan American Story, reported by Bob Dotson, aired today. TVNewser reported last month about the goal of finding a place reporters, “haven’t found,” and with the Gov. Sarah Palin VP pick, the special report has new meaning.

> CNN has the “Magic Wall,” FNC has the “Bill Board,” and now MSNBC has their own fun piece of technology — the Microsoft Surface. It is the first time the public gets to see the device in use. Click continued to see one of the first reports using the Surface, with Chuck Todd playing the John King/Bill Hemmer role…

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> Charlie Gibson will anchor World News from Dallas this Wednesday. Gibson will interview ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson. The interview is part of a special series “Oil Crunch” which airs all this week.

> In an homage to Keith Olbermann, truTV’s Ashleigh Banfield is doing a “Countdown” on her show today. The 2-hour In Session (on now) is counting down the 14 counts that a judge in Las Vegas is facing for misconduct.

> NBC’s Bob Dotson spent the weekend in Alaska reporting for an upcoming Today show “American Story.” Dotson and crew will feature Alaska’s community of Russian Old Believers. The journos were even welcomed by the locals: “They followed our instruction and we’re thankful for that,” said Anecta Kalugin, whose wedding NBC covered Saturday. “Other times, we’ve had TV crews from abroad come and they just abused the privileges.” The story airs next month.