Blogfinger

By Charles Layton

Graham Messick, a part-time Ocean Grover, has received two Emmy awards for his work on 60 Minutes.

This year’s Emmys, television’s equivalent of Hollywood’s Academy Awards and the music industry’s Grammys, were the 6th and 7th of Messick’s career. He has been a producer for the CBS program since 2000. Messick won the awards this year for “The Blowout,” an investigation, in two parts, dealing with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The stories, co-produced with colleague Solly Granatstein, were cited repeatedly in Congressional grillings of BP and Transocean officials.

“It’s an amazing honor, especially winning two,” Messick told me. “But the best part of my week by far was coming to Ocean Grove and enjoying the beach on the first day of October. Thank God there are no oil rigs in our neighborhood.”

Messick (2nd from right) with CBS colleagues at the Emmy Awards

Messick, 47, has managed dozens of major investigations during his career at 60 Minutes. In 2006, he was one of the first journalists to unravel the CIA practice known as rendition, in which agents snatch terrorism suspects from foreign countries, bundle them onto private airplanes and fly them to overseas prisons.

In 2007, he produced a two-part series featuring the first interview with former CIA director George Tenet. In 2009, he produced a report on cyber security and a report on the mortgage meltdown, both of which were highly acclaimed within the TV industry.

Messick, his wife, independent producer Bonnie Bertram, and their two children live in Manhattan and own a summer/weekend home in the Grove, where they spend much of their time.

The photo at right shows him in one of his prouder moments as a Grover.