Won first place for 3-part "Drug Court" series, examining effectiveness and profiling participants of the drug court program in Knox County, Ill., competing against daily newspapers in the state with up to 15,000 circulation.
Shared award with two co-workers for "Fatal Dog Attack" competing against small dailies in Illinois with circulation up to 15,000.
Received first place in Division C (Dailies with circulation under 15,000) for regional coverage on drug forfeiture funding in west central Illinois. Also received third place for story about an increase in drug arrests following daily crime interdiction at the Amtrak Depot. Comments: A good, solid effort. Shows both the benefits of the assets seizure and some of the issues.
Received first place in Division C (Dailies with circulation under 15,000) for article on a 32-year-old unsolved murder case. Comments: Fantastic! Draws the readers in and keeps them until the end. Well done.
Won first place in Division D (Dailies with circulation of 10,000 and under) for reporting on cops and courts beat. The Register-Mail also won the Patrick Coburn Award of Excellence in the sweepstakes. Comments: Nice narratives, in depth, clearly knows the beat.
Won second place in Division D (Dailies with circulation of 10,000 and under) for regional project on drug forfeiture funding in west central Illinois. Comments: The details in this story made it a very interesting read. I'm sure it took the reporters a while to gather so much detail. Great effort. Also received honorable mention for Enterprise/Feature story for coverage of unsolved murder case. Comments: Cold case stories are commonplace now but this one excelled by really telling the stories of the dead man and the suspect.
Received award from the Best of GateHouse competition for Division B (Dailies with circulation between 9,000 and 24,999) for work at The Register-Mail
First place, breaking news reporting, SPJ Region 4 Mark of Excellence awards. Part of a breaking news team that covered an explosion near campus. Managed to get the late-breaking news on the front page of our newspaper, along with an accompanying slideshow and video online.
Was named the outstanding journalism graduate for my class in the University of Cincinnati journalism department.
Won second place for best feature writing for the SPJ Region 4 Mark of Excellence awards. Story focused on an alumnus of the University of Cincinnati who made his career touring with musical productions as a stage manager.
Received a Scripps Howard Scholarship and Grant, awarded by the University of Cincinnati journalism department, which was used for my internship at the Chicago Sun-Times during the summer of 2011.
Awarded the scholarship by the Chicago chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. Was used during my internship with the Chicago Sun-Times.
