FINAL ROUND JUDGES

John Barth is a longtime public radio producer, reporter and editor. Barth was the founding producer of Marketplace, went from there to run all of AOL's news operations, then became Director of Original Content at the premier spoken-word site Audible.com. He is currently the managing director for PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Emily Botein is an independent radio producer based in New York, who helped launch PRI’s The Next Big Thing in 1999 and served as its senior producer. Since 2005, she has worked with a range of shows and institutions, including American RadioWorks, American Routes, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio and Weekend America.

Alex Blumberg is a producer for the public radio program This American Life. He won the TCIAF’s Gold Award in 2002 for the story Yes, There is a Baby. His documentary on clinical medical ethicists won the Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI) award for Best Radio Documentary.

Emily Hanford is an independent radio producer based in Takoma Park, MD. She is a member of the PRX Editorial Board and a senior editor and producer for North Carolina Public Radio–WUNC. Hanford has won numerous awards including a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton for the series North Carolina Voices: Understanding Poverty.

Art Silverman grew up with a transistor radio listening to Arthur Godfrey and radio storyteller Jean Shepherd while attempting to build a low-wattage transmitter in his bedroom. In 1985 he joined the staff of NPR’s All Things Considered, where he is now a senior producer. In the course of his time at NPR Silverman has created several documentaries, including Goodbye, Saigon – an hour-by-hour recounting of events in Vietnam at the end of the war.

Taki Telonidis is media producer for the Western Folklife Center in Salt Lake City. Since 1998 he and colleague Hal Cannon have produced dozens of radio features about life in the American West. Their work airs regularly on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and on APM’s Marketplace. Telonidis has received numerous prizes including the CPB’s Gold and Silver Awards, and a Rocky Mountain Emmy Award.

Steve Wadhams has been in love with radio ever sincehe walked intoa BBC training studio in 1968. Wadhams moved toCanada in the mid 70'sand has established himself as a leading radio documentary producer and mentor. His work has won many Canadian and international awards.  Heis currently a producer withCBC'sOutfront and executive producer of a new series of 'adventurous audio journeys' called In Your Ear.

Initial Round Judges

Barbara Calabrese is a specialist in communications; she has spoken at national conferences in the areas of media and the community and the effect of digital technology on broadcast education. Calabrese is currently chair of the Radio Department at Columbia College Chicago and teaches courses in radio interviewing, radio theater and voice and articulation.

Cate Cahan is editor of the Metro Desk at Chicago Public Radio, where she’s been on staff since 1998. She works with an award-winning team of reporters who cover politics, urban affairs, criminal justice and a variety of communities in and around Chicago. Cahan is the recipient of numerous local and national radio awards.

For the past seven years, Shawn Campbell has been the program director at 88.7 WLUW, listener-supported, community radio.  She also has been a news director, news anchor, music director, and on-air host at a number of different radio stations around northern Illinois and northwest Indiana.  Campbell holds an M.A. in Radio/Television/Film from Northwestern University.

Sylvia M. Ewing is an award winning communications veteran who specializes in making complex issues accessible on the radio, TV, and print. After freelancing for Chicago Public Radio for a decade, she joined the staff in 2003 as a producer for Eight Forty Eight. Ewing has been a producer and correspondent for numerous programs on the PBS outlet WTTW, Channel 11 including Chicago Tonight and Artbeat. She is an adjunct professor at Columbia College where she teaches a course called TV and Society.

Cassie Fennell is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago and has been conducting fieldwork for her dissertation on how public housing redevelopment on Chicago’s West Side has been affecting people there. Her research looks at how this project, conceptualized as part of welfare reform, changes a community's social life and public space.

Steve Frenkel is the Director of Policy Development in the Office of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Frenkel was a public radio reporter from 1995-1998, during which time he was the Chicago Bureau producer for the Great Lakes Radio Consortium and a contributor to WBEZ's Chicago Matters series, NPR's Morning Addition, All Things Considered, Living On Earth, and Marketplace.

Rachel Havrelock is a professor of Jewish Studies and English at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she is a founding member of the Jewish-Muslim Initiative.  She is the co-author of Women on the Biblical Road and author of numerous articles; her current project is a history of the Jordan River as a border. Havrelock’s academic life is balanced with a life in theater as a playwright and director of From Tel Aviv to Ramallah and Soundtrack City, hip-hop plays about contemporary urban life.

Kitry Krause is a senior editor at the Chicago Reader, where's she been an editor and writer since 1987. She edits mainly front-section stories, including Hot Type and many features stories. Before coming to Chicago she was at the Washington Monthly.

Ed Herrmann has worked in public radio as a program host, producer, and engineer. He has travelled widely recording nature sounds and performing improvised music with analog electronics and original instruments. He currently lives in Chicago where he produces Wake Up and Hear the Roses, a podcast devoted to natural and imaginary soundscapes. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he still thinks of radio as a public resource which can be used for the common good.

Edie Rubinowitz is an assistant professor at Northeastern Illinois University’s Department of Communication, Media and Theatre. Previously, she taught journalism at Loyola University and Columbia College. She worked at Chicago Public Radio for seven years primarily as a reporter, but also produced Worldview with Jerome McDonnell. Her work has appeared nationally on Morning Edition,  All Things Considered, and Marketplace, She has received awards from the Associated Press, the Society of  Professional Journalists, and the Casey Foundation.

Joanna Rudnick is the director of development at Kartemquin Films, a social-issue, documentary film company in Chicago. She has been working as a producer with the company since 2003. Before coming to Kartemquin, Rudnick worked on several public television documentaries for the American Masters Series in New York, including co-producing an award-winning film on war photographer Robert Capa. She has a Masters degree in Science and Environmental Journalism and has written for several publications.

Dan Rybicky  is a writer, artist and teacher. His stage work has been produced in different venues in New York City, and he recently wrote a screenplay for independent producer Andrea Sperling (Pumpkin , But I¹m A Cheerleader ). He currently teaches in the film department of Columbia College and has recently begun work on a fictional documentary about his relationship to Tryon Farm, a conservation community located in Indiana.

Hank Sartin is the editor of the Film Section at Time Out Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from the University of Chicago, where he wrote a dissertation on Warner Brothers' cartoons. He has taught journalism and cinema studies at the University of Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, and Columbia College. Sartin is a regular contributor to WGN AM720, where he discusses film on a monthly basis.

Susan Stephens is a native Michigander who has now spent more than a third of her life as an Illinoisan.  That's also about as long as she has been a radio professional, from weekend overnight oldies disc jockey to news director at WNIJ public radio in northwest Illinois.  Stephens has won a number of state and national awards, including Illinois Associated Press' Best Newswriter and several for documentaries from Public Radio News Directors, Inc.

Paul Sturtz is the director of True/False, a documentary festival in Columbia, Missouri, where he also programs the Ragtag Cinema, an independent moviehouse. For the last two years, he has organized classes in the production of animated documentaries, a very peculiar hybrid that would have put Columbia on the map, but strangely the cartographers paid no mind. One day, he wants to have a band called The Wrong Numbers, but first needs to teach himself how to play an instrument.

David E. Tolchinsky is an Associate Professor of Radio, TV, and Film at Northwestern University and Co-Director of the Program in Sound Design.  As a sound designer/composer, he has worked on computer environments and interactive installations, which have exhibited internationally. He received the Yale Abraham Beekman Cox Award in Composition and has been nominated for two Golden Reel Awards by the Motion Picture Sound Editors Guild.

Philip von Zweck is a Chicago-based artist who has been active in radio for more than a decade as the host/producer of Something Else (1995-present), a program comprised of experimental and avant-garde works submitted for broadcast; and as founder/executive producer of Blind Spot (2003-6) a group which produced live experimental works for radio weekly on WLUW. He was Visiting Professor of Sound & Radio Art at Brooklyn College in 2004-5. He currently teaches at the School of the Art Insitutet of Chicago, Northwestern and North Park University.