Hunter alum Matthew Perlman wins 2013 Murray Kempton Award

Hunter alum Matthew Perlman, who graduated today from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, has won the 2013 Murray Kempton Award for best news story, for a story he wrote for The Hunts Point Express as a student in Hunter’s Neighborhood News class.

Of “Rotten Bananas on Kelly Street,” a story about tenants’ struggle with a landlord who was failing to provide basic services, the judges wrote, “This punchy news story delivers ‘the smell of rot and absent plumbing’ and the ‘discarded ware of junkies … on a table of what was once the living room’ in an apartment building that was neglected and then abandoned by its landlord. The story lays out the residents’ situation with clarity and context, while looking forward to the repairs promised by the nonprofit Banana Kelly Improvement Association, a local developer of moderate-income housing in the South Bronx.”