Chicago Headline Club

A few months ago my editor at Shore Magazine and NWI Parent, Pat Colander, sent me an e-mail saying that she had nominated me for the awards that the Chicago Headline Club hands out to Chicago journalists every year. She said I would be in the category called "affiliated blogs," which basically means blogs that are affiliated with Chicago-area newspapers. (My Father Knows Nothing blog is affiliated with the NWI Times.)

To be honest, I didn't think anything of it. I just thought it was nice that she thought highly enough of me to submit my work. I didn't think I would be taken seriously by an organization of journalists. I didn't even know that she was referring to the Peter Lisagor Awards, which are pretty prestigious in the journalism community.

So, since I do follow the media pretty closely, I read all about the Lisagor awards this week. I even noticed that Roger Ebert won one in the affiliated blogs category. But I had no idea that I was in that same category, because I didn't know that these were the awards I was nominated for.

It turns out that not only was I nominated, I was named a finalist to Roger Ebert. (I found that out reading Pat's Shore Magazine blog about the event.)

I even e-mailed Pat to make sure I wasn't seeing things, or misinterpreting them, but holy crap, no--it's actually true. She said she would have invited me to the event, but didn't realize I was a finalist until she got there.

Now I'll grant you finishing second place to Roger Ebert is kind of like finishing second to UCLA back in the 1960s--you never really had a chance anyway, so don't get all high and mighty Mr. second rate pipsqueak--but still, I have to admit...this is pretty cool.

Thank you Chicago Headline Club, and thanks to my boys for being entertaining enough to write a column about every week.