News & Information

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. - June 13, 2011) National Public Radio station KCLU collected nine awards for broadcast excellence in three ceremonies.

The California Teachers Association presented KCLU Special Projects Reporter John North with a 2011 John Swett Radio Award for Media Excellence on June 3 in Los Angeles. He was honored for "K-12: On the Edge," an hour-long, in-depth documentary that he produced and anchored about the state school funding crisis. North interviewed Ventura and Santa Barbara county educators, parents and students. KCLU was the only radio station to receive a prestigious Swett award this year.

KCLU won three 2011 Mark Twain Awards for broadcast excellence from the Associated Press Television and Radio Association at Disneyland on June 4. Program Director Jim Rondeau, News Director Lance Orozco and News Anchor Dave Meyer were honored for Best Continuing Coverage for their work on "Simi Valley Lab Explosion." Orozco received the Best Spot News Story award for "The Deadly Drive," his coverage of a runaway big rig that killed three people when it smashed into a Santa Barbara home, and Best Sports Reporting for "It's More Than A Game," a feature story about the 100th high school football game in the Santa Paula-Fillmore rivalry. KCLU competed with small market stations in more than a dozen Western states.

The station won five of eight 2011 Edward R. Murrow Awards given in the small market radio division for stations in California, Guam, Hawaii and Nevada. Orozco was honored for Best Hard News Audio for "Panning Panhandling," his story on efforts to curtail begging in Santa Barbara; for Best Audio News Series for "KCLU Election Preview"; for Best Audio Sports Reporting for "Cowboys Roundup" on the Dallas football training camp in Oxnard; and for Best Writing for "So You Think You Know the Beatles," an interview with producer Sir George Martin. Rondeau, Orozco and Meyer also received a Murrow Award for Best Audio Continuing Coverage for "Simi Valley Explosion." The Radio Television Digital News Association presented the awards in April.

KCLU provides NPR and local news programming to Ventura County at 88.3 FM and Santa Barbara County at 102.3 FM and 1340 AM. Listeners around the world can also tune in live or hear archived stories, including those honored for excellence, at http://www.kclu.org. The station is a community service of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks and just moved into a new broadcast center on the campus in May.