Presenting...

The Winners of the 2008 TCF /
Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition

Best Documentary, Gold Award: Dr. Phil, by Starlee Kine with Editor Alex Blumberg (USA)

Starlee Kine has been a contributor to This American Life; is co-creator of the Post-It Note Reading Series; and is currently working on a book of essays about self-help called “It IS Your Fault."

Best Documentary, Silver Award: Growing Up in the System, reported by Shirley “Star” Diaz, produced by Melissa Robbins and edited by Marianne McCune, with help from Kaari Pitkin and Sanda Htyte (USA)

Shirley Diaz joined the Radio Rookies program in August 2007 and spent the next seven months producing her story about growing up in New York’s foster care system. Now 21, Diaz recently “aged out” of foster care and is now living for the first time in her own apartment. She works full-time in a downtown law firm, a job she got after a listener at the firm heard her story on the radio. Diaz loves to write music and sing; her dream is to be an entertainer.

Melissa Robbins has worked as an independent radio producer and as an associate producer with The Kitchen Sisters, Homelands Productions  and most recently, WNYC's Radio Rookies. She has produced pieces for  NPR, created programming for the Holocaust Memorial Museum and  reported for the BBC World Service. Melissa studied radio at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies and before that worked as anewspaper reporter in London and New York City.

Best Documentary, Bronze Award: Hearts, Lungs and Minds, by John Wynne with Project Collaborator Tim Wainwright and Project Co-ordinator Victoria Hume (UK)

John Wynne has a PhD in Sound Art.  His often research-intensive work includes ‘composed documentaries’ for radio and installations for galleries and museums. His work with endangered languages includes Hearing Voices, an award-winning radio piece based on click-languages in Botswana, and a current project with one of Canada’s indigenous languages.  He was artist-in-residence, along with photographer Tim Wainwright, at a hospital for heart and lung transplantation near London, leading to a 24-channel gallery installation, a book, and a half-hour work for BBC Radio 3.

Directors' Choice Award and Best Documentary, Honorable Mention:
The Giant Pool of Money , by Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson (USA)

Alex Blumberg (pictured left) is a producer at This American Life. Prior to producing The Giant Pool of Money, he did stories about teenage Steve Forbes supporters and women who imitate their mothers. He is surprised and a little uncomfortable with how much he now knows about mortgage finance.

Adam Davidson is International Business & Economics Correspondent for National Public Radio. He travels the world, covering the global economy and trying hard to make it interesting to people who don't normally care about economics. Davidson is a frequent contributor to This American Life and used to be Mideast correspondent for Marketplace. He's won a few awards, including the Daniel Schorr Prize, and was a finalist for the DuPont-Columbia Award.

Best Documentary, Honorable Mention: Dreaming of Osama, by Pejk Malinovski with field recording assistance from Katie Burningham, research assistance from Shawn Wen, and final mix assistance from Peregrine Andrews (UK)

Pejk Malinovski has produced long-format radio documentaries, cultural reporting and radio art for National Danish Radio, BBC’s Radio 4 and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Malinovski created radio dramas, real and fake documentaries, and other 'radio-ocities' for WNYC’s The Next Big Thing and is currently an associate producer with PRI’s Studio 360.

Best Documentary, Honorable Mention: Searching for Farming's Future in Its Past, by Rachel Leventhal with Executive Producer Daniel Hinerfeld (USA)

Rachel Leventhal is a writer, multimedia producer, and photographer whose stories explore the themes of human rights and sustainability. She’s been a contributor to NPR, a Videojournalist for NYT Television, and has written and photographed for the New York Times and other publications. Rachel has interviewed female child soldiers in Liberia, protesters in Tibet and, with support from the Soros Foundation, has collaborated with incarcerated mothers in creating audio/visual scrapbooks about their lives.

Best New Artist Award: Except Me, by Erin Davis (USA)

Erin Davis is a Midwesterner living and listening in Brooklyn, New York. She was working in women’s healthcare in Chicago when she traded in her scrubs for a microphone and headed to Portland, Maine for a change of pace.  She is a graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, recently completed an internship with PRI’s Studio 360 and is wildly anticipating her next adventure.

Best News Feature: Shattered School, by Melissa Block and Andrea Hsu (USA)

Melissa Block hosts NPR's newsmagazine All Things Considered, public radio's longest-running national program, with Robert Siegel and Michele Norris. She became co-host in 2003 – 18 years after first joining the program in 1985 as an editorial assistant. Block has covered many national and international events for NPR, including September 11th, the aftermath of the Kosovo war and the Virginia Tech shootings. Block graduated from Harvard University in 1983 with a degree in French history and literature, and spent the following year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Geneva.

Andrea Hsu is a producer with All Things Considered. She joined NPR as a booker in 2002, and has since worked as a field producer for the show. Hsu was in Chengdu making final plans for All Things Considered’s long-planned China Week when the Sichuan earthquake hit. Working with host Melissa Block, she produced many of the program’s most memorable stories about the quake and its aftermath. Before NPR, Hsu worked for the BBC in Beijing and London, and for National Geographic Television in Washington, D.C.