When Josh Murphy ’17 first saw the devastation left by Hurricane Helene in Eastern North Carolina, it was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
Murphy, a photojournalist with WYFF News 4 in Greenville, South Carolina, traveled to the hard-hit region with reporter Isabelle Marak a week after the hurricane swept through the Carolinas in September 2025. He saw homes that had been swept away in a torrent of mud and water, businesses leveled by raging floodwaters, and families sleeping in tents. “It was apocalyptic,” he recalls.
But amid the destruction, there were stories of resilience and compassion, too, and they were among the ones Murphy and Merak returned to six months later. That reporting, “Six Months After Helene,” earned Murphy and his colleagues an Emmy for Best Morning Newscast at the 2026 Southeast Emmys.
“I’ve worked hard to get good at what I do,” Murphy says. “So to win the big one was really, really special for me.”
As the person behind the camera, Murphy may not be visible but his work gives any story its impact. “My job is to, as effectively as possible, show people what’s happening,” Murphy explains. “You get to come as close as you can without actually being there.”
Murphy has developed an eye for strong visuals after four years in the field, three of them at WYFF. When he arrives at a scene, he starts shooting immediately. Even though only a minute and a half or two minutes will be used, Murphy likes to be sure he has everything he needs to tell a compelling story.
In the case of Helene, two stories stuck with him that he revisited in the six-month report. One was about The Hickory Nut, a store in Chimney Rock destroyed by flooding. Though the owners, who lived on site, also lost their home, they were determined to restart their business.
The other story focused on the Blessing Barn in Swannoa, which provided free essentials, food and clothes to families displaced by the storm. Even now, the organization continues to offer support to people in need.
“It was really humbling to see these people who had lost everything,” Murphy recalls of his first visit after the storm. “I could come home at night, but their lives continued like that.”
While his camera and editing skills were honed on the job, Murphy credits his classes at Upstate with developing the soft skills that are critical in his work: empathy, good communication, putting people at ease. “When you work in news, you are either meeting people on their best day or on their worst day,” he says. “You can’t just go in and point a camera in someone’s face. You have to make them feel comfortable.”
His Upstate courses also taught him to think about the larger context surrounding specific incidents and examine the societal factors that may have contributed. “You can always find a deeper angle,” he says.
Though viewers may never know who he is, receiving his profession’s top award is validation enough for Murphy. “To have a tangible piece of recognition where I can say, ‘Hey, I did work that was good enough and special enough and impactful enough to win,’ it’s just really cool.”
