Channel 8's approach to news during this period was characterized by an aggressive, all-out commitment to get the story and to present it in graphic, visual detail. The station was rewarded with some of the highest ratings of any local station in a major media market. A standard practice was to have each reporter cover only one beat, such as Dallas City Hall or the Dallas County Commission, making the reporter an expert on the subject that he or she was covering. Former news director H. Martin "Marty" Haag is credited with leading the station's news department to ratings dominance and national prominence, as well as convincing the "Dallas Morning News" ownership to allow much greater spending on news at WFAA than ever seen before, far surpassing the budgets of other local rival stations. Haag was honored with a special Lifetime Achievement George Foster Peabody Award shortly before his death in 2004. The station resumed a local morning newscast in 1987, when it launched the initially 60-minute traditional news program "News 8 Daybreak" (which evolved out of local news inserts that it aired during "World News This Morning"). WFAA pioneered community outreach in 1977 with the "Wednesday's Child" series of feature segments, which profiled children in need of an adoptive family and was descended from a feature segment on "News 8 Etc."; the current iteration was initially conducted by John Criswell during his stint as co-host of the retooled "AM", before becoming a weekly feature on WFAA's 10:00 p.m. newscast in September 1980. In 1994, the station began conducting town hall meetings all over North Texas through its "Family First" (F1) initiative, which remains a significant part of the station's commitment to community service.