KCLU receives 6 broadcast news awards

News, entertainment and business coverage honored

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News Director Lance Orozco received awards for Best News Reporting, Best Entertainment Reporting and Best Business and Consumer Reporting.

Photo: Brian Stethem

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Jan. 28, 2014) National Public Radio Station KCLU won six awards from two regional broadcast news organizations.

KCLU was the biggest winner among radio stations in Division B, the category for those with five or fewer news staff members, at the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California’s 64th annual awards ceremony Saturday at the Universal Hilton. Broadcast newsrooms in a region stretching from San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield to the Mexican border competed.

The station received four awards in the small-station division. Jim Rondeau, director of operations and programming, and News Director Lance Orozco were honored for Best Spot News Reporting for their coverage of the Springs Fire that burned in Ventura County in May. Orozco received the Best News Reporting honors for his profile of a Ventura County man who was abused as a child. He was also honored for Best Entertainment Reporting for his story on a Santa Barbara County program that uses singing to help teens cope with emotional issues and Best Business and Consumer Reporting for his piece on a blind Ventura County youth who has gotten local supermarkets to provide Braille labels.

On Jan. 15, the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Northern California announced that KCLU received two awards in its 32nd annual competition. The association includes newsrooms from Santa Barbara to the northern border of California and Reno. Rondeau was honored for the Best News Broadcast Under 15 Minutes among small-market stations. Orozco received the award for Best Radio News Reporting among stations in all markets for “The Long Goodbye,” a story about a Santa Barbara woman coping with her Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

KCLU provides NPR and local news programming in Ventura County at

88.3 FM, in southern Santa Barbara County at 102.3 FM and 1340 AM, in northern Santa Barbara County and southern San Luis Obispo County at 89.7 FM, and online at http://www.kclu.org. The station is a community service of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

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