"It's nice to get recognition," he says, "but I hate awards ceremonies."

He'll grin and bear it tonight in New York City, where he'll accept his Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for broadcast journalism. The award recognizes "Standards of Living" and "Paper Thin Promise," two entries in the "Focal Point" series of documentaries that Johnson and his crew of two have produced over the past two years.

"Focal Point" is different from the special reports that TV news staffs produce. Johnson and his team operate separately from the newsroom, though they share some resources and newsroom staffers narrate the documentaries.

"I think that's the only way that a documentary unit can work at a local television station," Johnson says, "because, if you're part of the news department, the next thing you know, you're sucked into the news cycle."

His half-hour documentaries have explored the system's failure to protect victims of domestic violence ("Paper Thin Promise"), housing conditions for North Carolina migrant workers ("Standards of Living") and the disproportionately high rate of black men in North Carolina prisons ("Lost Generation").

Johnson says his greatest reward is hearing from advocacy groups, police departments, universities and other organizations that want to use his documentaries for teaching and lobbying.

In "Standards of Living," which first aired in 2005, Johnson rendered a vivid picture of migrant housing conditions. The faith-based National Farm Worker Ministry, which advocates for workers' rights, has distributed more than 100 copies to churches and other groups.

"You can see the housing for yourself," says ministry member Lori Fernald Khamala. "That's one of the advantages of using the visual medium."

Raleigh-based community activist Bruce Lightner said he couldn't sleep the night he saw Johnson's "Lost Generation," which examines the causes and effects of the high incarceration rate for black males. According to the documentary, African-American men make up 10 percent of the state's overall population; meanwhile, prison statistics show that more than 55 percent of the state's inmates are black males.

"Something is wrong with this picture," Lightner says. "It is with this backdrop that we decided to form a community task force." Within 48 hours of seeing Johnson's documentary, he and others formed the Triangle Lost Generation Task Force to work with schools and law enforcement to help at-risk youths.

Johnson, 47, was born in Birmingham, Ala., and grew up in Georgia and South Carolina. He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in broadcast journalism and worked in radio and TV news. In 1994, Gov. Jim Hunt appointed him deputy press secretary. After two years, he left to start his own production company, which made programs and feature segments for UNC-TV.

His interest in filmmaking goes back to the Super 8 camera he owned as an eighth-grader, and he hasn't abandoned his childhood dream of making a feature film someday. But he sees what he's doing as not far removed from that goal.

"A documentary is a story," says Johnson, who lives in Cary. "And like any story, you have to have a story line, good characters, and you have to have a beginning, a middle and an end."

As part of winning the duPont Award, Johnson had a camera turned on him for a change. At 10 p.m. Tuesday, UNC-TV will air the PBS documentary "Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast Journalism," in which CNN's Christiane Amanpour interviews the duPont winners, including Johnson.