![\"\"](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/WillisNFPWAward-771x536.jpg\")
NMPolitics.net and the Las Cruces Sun-News have won second place in a national feature writing competition for a story about how a\u00a0multi-ethnic family is\u00a0working to make ends meet and get along in a complicated world.<\/p>\nNMPolitics.net and the Las Cruces Sun-News have won second place in a national feature writing competition for a story about how a\u00a0multi-ethnic family is\u00a0working to make ends meet and get along in a complicated world.<\/p>\n
The article,\u00a0\u201cMillennials like this mixed-ethnicity couple are reshaping America,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0won second\u00a0place in the feature story category of the\u00a0National Federation of Press Women’s<\/a>\u00a02017\u00a0competition. Damien Willis wrote the\u00a0article and Robin Zielinski created a video report and photos to accompany it.<\/p>\n “I’m honored to have been afforded the unique opportunity to share this important story,” Willis said.<\/p>\n He\u00a0and Zielinski told the story of\u00a0Luz Skywalker and Zach Eason, a multi-ethnic Las Cruces couple, and their daughter Luna. They placed the\u00a0family in a larger context with statistics and other information, with the 2016 election as a backdrop.<\/p>\n This is the third award the story has won, and the first for which it\u00a0faced national competition. Earlier this year the\u00a0New Mexico Press Women\u00a0awarded the story first place for feature writing<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cGood use of the metaphor of color as a hook and to unify the ideas in the story,\u201d a judge in the state contest wrote about the story. \u201cThere are several complex issues here, and the use of color helps move it along in a strong, concise manner.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, the New Mexico Press Association has notified the Sun-News\u00a0that the story won a feature-writing award in its annual competition<\/a>. How the story placed in that competition won’t be announced until November.<\/p>\n The article\u00a0was part of a collaboration\u00a0between NMPolitics.net and\u00a0the Sun-News to tell stories about\u00a0multi-ethnic families in New Mexico as a way to bridge our understanding of one another. The second article<\/a> in the series<\/a> told the story of a Las Cruces mother who makes sense of tragedy by doing\u00a0stand-up comedy. The project was funded with help from the\u00a0Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n Willis and Zielinski invested many hours in the project. So did Skywalker and Eason, who Willis thanked for inviting the journalists into their home and spending “countless hours sharing very personal and private details of their relationship.”<\/p>\n “They opened up their lives to us so that we could better tell their story,” Willis said. He called the article\u00a0“a difficult project, but also profoundly gratifying. This may be the very personal story of one young family, but I hope it’s also an example of why journalism matters.”<\/p>\n You can read the story about Skywalker and Eason here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is the second consecutive year an NMPolitics.net article has placed in the\u00a0National Federation of Press Women’s annual competition. Last year, editor and publisher\u00a0Heath Haussamen won first place in the investigative reporting category<\/a> for\u00a0shining light on a possible conflict of interest<\/a> current N.M. State Auditor Tim Keller had when he was a state senator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The news organizations won second place in a national feature writing competition for a story about how a multi-ethnic family is working to make ends meet and get along in a complicated world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":433514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3297,630],"tags":[3268,3311,137],"class_list":["post-433507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journalism-awards","category-news-about-nmpolitics-net","tag-journalism","tag-millennials","tag-news-about-this-site"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}