By John C. O'Connell
Award-winning ABC News Radio producer Hank Weinbloom's "America at War: Veterans Day Special," aired all around the country, and on the network's Website, over Veterans Day weekend, Nov. 11, 2001, featuring interviews with soldiers, sailors and airmen fighting the Taliban, profiles of young men and women entering the Armed Forces in the aftermath of September 11, and reflections of veterans of Vietnam, World War II, Korea and The Gulf War.
For this outstanding program, Weinbloom earned the International Angel Award from Excellence in Media on March 15. This prestigious award is given to media professionals who contribute to the advancement of quality in life without the need for violence, profanity and sexual content to sell to their audience. Excellence in Media is a Los Angeles-based organization, which strives to improve the moral and ethical content of films, television shows, books, record albums, and other forms of media.
"It's nice to know that somebody thought the work that I did was worthy of winning an award," Weinbloom said. "It feels good to know that somebody thinks it was good work. I certainly worked hard on it and it was nice to see it honored."
The concept for the enlightening news magazine-style program was his idea, and he decided what elements would be in it. He assigned reporters, edited their work and he did the technical production of the piece. He made sure the one-hour program's many parts all flowed together and made sense editorially.
Weinbloom, 47, a producer and assignment editor at ABC News Radio since 1986, is also the producer of the award-winning weekly news magazine program Perspective. He has also produced many special broadcasts for ABC Radio, including Matters of Faith with Peter Jennings, Up in the Air: Will America Fly Again? with Charles Gibson and Mrs. Bush's Storytime featuring former First Lady Barbara Bush.
Weinbloom also just won the Wilbur Award, a religious organization's honor, for "A Matter of Faith."
Perspectives can be heard on ABC's Website and 200 radio stations around the county. But unfortunately, not in New York City. The Website is ABCradio.com
In addition to being a producer for the network, Weinbloom is general news assignment editor for ABC radio newscasts.
"So my job on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis is to make sure we cover all of the news, get reporters to do stories, the audio and the sound that we use on our newscasts."
There's a passion in Weinbloom's rich radio-voice when he speaks of his work. "The best part of what I do is that it changes constantly, that it's exciting. I cannot think of any occupation that could be more exciting than what this job is when there is breaking news."
Weinbloom has been a resident of Valley Stream for 15 years with his wife, Lori, and their two daughters, Elizabeth and Jenny.
"We live here in Valley Stream because we were looking for a community that we thought would be good to raise children and it has turned out to be very, very much that. It is safe. It is fairly proximate to where I work in Manhattan and where my parents and my wife's parents live. It's close in and it's a good, safe place with good schools."
Daughter Elizabeth is a junior at South High School and daughter Jenny is in 8th grade at South.
Elizabeth is already following in dad's footsteps: she's the editor of the Southern Belle, the school newspaper.
