Society of Professional Journalists to honor reporter
INDIANAPOLIS — The Society of Professional Journalists is awarding a 2012 Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism to KCLU News Director Lance Orozco for his story chronicling his battle with kidney cancer.
Orozco will receive the award for best feature reporting among all small-market radio stations in the United States on June 21 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Judges selected a total of 84 honorees from nearly 1,700 submissions from television stations, radio stations, newspapers, online news outlets and magazines.
This is the first time that KCLU, a community service of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, has received a Sigma Delta Chi Award.
“My Cancer” included recordings from Orozco’s surgery and the appointment where he received the biopsy results.
Earlier this year, the Sherman Oaks resident received two Golden Mike Awards from the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California for the story.
Orozco, a broadcast journalist for three decades, worked at KEYT-TV, KCBS-TV and other television and radio stations throughout California before joining KCLU in 2001. In 2010, he received a National Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association.
KCLU provides National Public Radio and local news programming in Ventura County at 88.3 FM and Santa Barbara County at 102.3 FM and 1340 AM. Listeners can also tune in live or hear archived stories, including “My Cancer,” at kclu.org