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February 28, 2015March 6, 2019

Scooter pt. 2: A rough week on public transportation

That week began with long walks up and down snowy hills, and it ended with two men wanting to fight. That week began with cold, relentlessly snowy days, and it ended with me reeling in memories of other public transit experiences I’ve had in my life. I touched on some of those feelings in Scooter pt.1, but that week–that week was something else.

Before we discuss that week, I have to provide a kind of counterbalance to what can be seen as pure negativity about Cleveland’s public transportation reality. Many days, the buses run more or less as they should. Many days I arrive at work, and arrive back home relatively on schedule. Many days there is nothing out of the ordinary to report, although there is plenty that is out of the ordinary, like the people.

November 27, 2014March 6, 2019

Reflections on the Nile: The Hustle

It’s been more than a year since my troupe moved back to the U.S., but the adventures of our last 5 years still all seem very close and tangible. These adventures touched us deeply, and as we face new challenges, it’s good to reflect and remember the past.

We were lucky enough, as a family, to travel to places like Athens and Crete, Britain and France. And I spent a brief time in Egypt on a reporting trip–a trip that was filled with discoveries for me. Much of my reporting was meant to give a snapshot of that time in Cairo, which was (is?) still figuring out where it was heading in its revolution.

But in this post I wanted to jot down some of the money-making observations I made while hoofing through Cairo. I hesitate to call them scams, because most of them were just ways people had inserted themselves into the tourist economy to make a few bucks. (Egyptian Pounds.) For most of these observations ‘scam’ is too strong. ‘Hustle’ might be closer to what I mean. And in a lucky break, my identifying the hustle helped me leave Egypt with a little more money in my pocket than I expected.

October 19, 2014March 6, 2019

Scooter: When public transit can only take you so far…

I was hungry–enthusiastic–to move to an American city with a fully-functioning public transit system, and Cleveland seemed to have potential. In moving here, we sought to rent a place near easy bus or train connections, and I immediately signed up for a monthly transit pass. Even an awkwardly uncomfortable encounter on my very first day riding the bus home with a fellow needing to deliver a racially-charged, drunken rant, did not discourage me. I commuted with the bus, more or less, uninterrupted for 10 months, but it wore me down. And it is with some regret that I say I have adopted a new primary commuting mode for the non-snowy months: a scooter.

September 6, 2014September 7, 2021

Peanuts, Cracker Jacks, and a complicated relationship with sports

I’ve only been to two professional baseball games in my life, the second of which was only recently to see the Cleveland Indians at Jacobs Field (technically now called Progressive Field, but it will always be ‘the Jake’ to me.)

The other came years ago in Arizona, observing the Diamondbacks in their air conditioned stadium on the surface of the sun.

Baseball is called an American past-time, and it is: watching a ball game is part of this country’s recreational DNA.

But my relationship with baseball, and professional sports in general, is complicated.

June 8, 2014June 6, 2024

Honoring Veterans Earns Man Knighthood: D-Day

April 22, 2014September 17, 2021

Swiss Legacy: WRS wins 3 Murrow awards after privatization!

I am proud to give some bitter-sweet news today:
my work for World Radio Switzerland won the station three Edward R. Murrow awards from the RTDNA! This is a huge honor. It is bitter-sweet, though, because the WRS that won these awards is no more: the station was privatized in 2013, and now lives on as a privately-held, commercial, local station for the Lake Geneva region. The news department which won these awards was disbanded along with the previous public service member WRS.

As I pointed out last year, when our work won an incredible five Murrows, World Radio Switzerland won in the international category, Region 14, for a small market station. “Small market” is defined (under one description I found) as one serving an audience of fewer than 1.4 million people. WRS’s main market is Geneva, served by FM, and has about 190,000 residents. Before privatization, it also had listeners elsewhere in the country through digital radio.

Here’s a list of the award-winning stories:

INTERNATIONAL, SMALL MARKET RADIO STATION: Feature Reporting
Davos talks about how to close the gender gap (Vincent Landon/Tony Ganzer)

INTERNATIONAL, SMALL MARKET RADIO STATION: News Series
Taking Stock of a Destroyed Swiss River (Tony Ganzer)

INTERNATIONAL, SMALL MARKET RADIO STATION: Use of Sound
First Stand-Alone Temple Opens in Switzerland (Tony Ganzer)

March 28, 2014January 20, 2017

Hindu temple story wins National Headliner, Religion Reporting Award!

UPDATE: This story also won first place Radio or Podcast Religion Report of the Year from the Religion Newswriters Association (RNA)!! I am humbled and honored to have won this award, and to have been welcomed by the Hindu community in Trimbach to share their temple and puja with the world.

A bit of good news on this Friday evening: my story profiling the first stand-alone Hindu temple in Switzerland as won a third place National Headliner Award! The awards were announced today by the Press Club of Atlantic City.

As readers of this site might already know, my previous station was sold and turned into a commercial, local station, focusing its resources on sales instead of journalism, leaving me to rediscover my homeland. Despite this, our work produced before the sale–and my inevitable exodus from Switzerland–is still eligible for some awards. This temple story is a version of a WRS story I expanded for Deutsche Welle, which distributes some program offerings to US public radio stations…hence my eligibility in this US prize!

Horns and drums are used to purify the air in this newly inaugurated Hindu temple in Trimbach—about halfway between Zurich and Basel.
Listen to the story from Deutsche Welle

Awards are, of course, not the most important thing in life. But given that WRS as I knew it is no more, this recognition from my peers is a nice tribute to work done in my former life.