What a great surprise! Delivered between cutting carrots and boiling ravioli - because unfortunately I was not able to attend the Southern California Journalism Awards and was preparing dinner instead.

But I won! And nice colleagues let me know via text messages, phone calls and tweets! So I had to check and found: 1st place in the radio category "Lifestyle feature" for a story I produced at KCRW and 1st place in "International News" for a Deutschlandradio Kultur story! Yeah! I am pretty stoked. Honestly it is a pretty lonely profession being out there with your microphone and recorder not getting a lot of feed back and feeling like most of your stuff just disappears somewhere in the airwaves. So it's nice somebody gives you a pat on the back!  I was even happier when I read the jury comments.

And I will totally shamelessly quote them here.

First for the KCRW story I did with Skylar Myers and Bob Carlson on Skylar and her childhood friend Randall in South Los Angeles:

"Comment: How can a piece sound as if it wasn’t edited as if it wasn’t even recorded. This is powerful and real and we learn about two people who were friends as kids but then they turned out very differently. We discover the differences as they do – and Skylar gives us insight into her friend, Randall almost as an aside. We are there!" 

For the Deutschlandradio Kultur story I did from a community meeting after police killed unarmed Ezell Ford, also in South Los Angeles

 "Comment: Conveys the deep pain, mistrust and anger of many in the African-American community when it comes to dealing with the LAPD. You can practically feel the anger and a certain level of helplessness bubbling just beneath the surface of everyone involved." 

See what I mean? This is pretty amazing because it summarizes what I want to achieve! 

So happy to be doing what I am doing and even more motivated to keep doing it.

I'll have a Schnapps now!

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