While as far as I know, a newsreel cameraman has never won an Emmy, I do however know that two of them won an Oscar for cinematography.

Yes you read that right, Joe Rucker and Willard Van der Veer of Paramount news won the 1930 Academy Award for Cinematography for the footage they shot on a very long assignment to the bottom of the world that was turned into a documentary by Paramount.

So far they remain the only two news photographers to have ever won that particular award.

Some of that footage the pair shot of Byrd’s 1928-1930 Antarctic expedition has surfaced online.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-R9PysOaxI

Joe Rucker eventually became a photographer for NBC News out of San Francisco and retired from news photography in 1955 and passed away in 1957. As a historical tidbit for one of my regular readers, Rucker was a past president of the San Francisco-Oakland Press Photographer’s Association per his Oakland Tribune obituary.

Van der Veer I know was working with Pathe News as of 1950 out of Los Angeles. His career between then and his death in 1963 so far remains a mystery lost to time.