The Society of Professional Journalists will honor Hubbard Broadcasting and KSTP-TV with its national Historic Site in Journalism award, which has been given to news organizations, people or landmarks of national interest since 1942.

The award, to be given Friday at the station in St. Paul, honors the Hubbard legacy, which began in 1925, when Stanley E. Hubbard started a radio station that played dance music. Twenty-three years later in 1948, Hubbard established the Midwest’s first commercial television station. That purchase was the beginning of a notable line of firsts for Hubbard Broadcasting, including: the first TV station in the United States to broadcast in color, the first to broadcast a seven-day schedule and the first to use remote satellite reports inside newscasts.

The annual Historic Site in Journalism designation has been given in the past to the Hartford Courant, the oldest newspaper of continuous publication in the United States; Elizabeth Timothy, the first female publisher of an American newspaper; and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the editor of the black newspaper Memphis Free Speech.