Quick trip to NYC: Friends, Journalism and Murrows

We are in NYC for a quick trip and it's certainly exciting and bittersweet. 

I've had a lot of fun catching up with my great friends and WISC cohorts Susan Siman and Colin Benedict. We are here to celebrate a highlight in our careers, accepting three national Edward R. Murrow awards. Receiving one is fairly remarkable but three is hard to put into words. We are taking home Murrows for overall excellence, newscast and feature reporting.

Joanne Lee holds a pic of her son Skylar

Even though it's great to be honored for our work, I feel conflicted. This year our best work comes from someone else's worst moments. The feature report I wrote and edited centered around Skylar Lee, a transgender teen who took his life. His mother Joanne is haunted for not being able to fully accept Skylar while he was alive. I called the story "Ashamed to Advocate" because it shows how Joanne has evolved. I believe her story changed a lot of minds and for that, I can accept this award with more peace.

Winning for newscast and overall excellence is also tremendous because it shows the dedication and teamwork coming out of the WISC newsroom. We showed a variety of hard and feature news along with some of our best interactive moments. I miss working in that newsroom every day. I suppose it's easier to say looking in the rear view mirror but I was very open about having a hard time leaving.

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Being in New York has also allowed us to see people and places. Although Jim works remotely in Seattle as a developer, one of his companies is based in Manhattan. It was great for him to spend some face-to-face time with the people he only sees online.

I also had a drink or three with two of my college friends, Carrie and Monica. It's been years since we've had the chance to get together but we picked up right where we left off. I'm proud I can call these intelligent, funny and beautiful women friends and so grateful they made time for me out of their busy weekend!

I am so in love with these brilliant, beautiful women... I'm honored to call them great friends after all these years. #rockchalkjayhawk #NYC

A photo posted by Michelle Li (@michellelitv) on Oct 9, 2016 at 4:45pm PDT

BTW, support Monica's new adventure in bridal fashion -- #monicabyrnemaison.

There will be many more pics and videos on social but I'm having all the feels right now in Manhattan. I can't wait to get back to work in Seattle but for now, we've really tried to make the best of our time in New York. I hope we leave here feeling inspired to make a difference in our communities through storytelling and journalism.