April 12, 2010

Krista Almanzan of KAZU radio has won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in electronic journalism presented by the Radio, Television, Digital News Association.

She won in Region 2, which includes California, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam, in the category of audio feature reporting. Her winning story profiled a group called the Monterey Bay Veterans, which runs a recreational rehabilitation program for disabled veterans that holds fishing derbies on Monterey Bay. The story can be found here.

Regional winners automatically become eligible for the national awards competition in June.

Last summer Almazan was selected to participate in National Public Radio's Impact of War project. She attended a training session, courtesy of NPR, that opened a path for local reporters to file NPR stories on how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have affected their communities. Her award-winning report was part of that project.

Almazan started her journalism career in Iowa where she covered the 2000 and 2004 presidential races and Iowa caucuses for local television stations. In 2005, she won the Stanley Foundation Award for Outstanding Broadcast Coverage of Iowa's global connections. Later that year, she returned to her home state of California where she continued to work in television and simultaneously got her start in public radio as a freelance reporter with Capital Public Radio in Sacramento. In 2007, she joined the staff at KAZU where she serves as host of All Things Considered as well as news director.

It's the second award for Almanzan in the last six months. In November, she was honored by the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Northern California for best feature reporting on a serious subject for "A Second Chance in Salinas." The story examined a program called Take the Lead, which pairs at-risk youngsters with dogs surrendered to the local SPCA.

KAZU 90.3 FM is a community service of California State University, Monterey Bay.