The Recombobulation Area wins big at the Milwaukee Press Club awards
The publication won six total awards, including a Gold honor for Angela Lang and five awards for Dan Shafer.
The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time NINETEEN-TIME Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
The Recombobulation Area won six awards at the Milwaukee Press Club’s 2024 Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism competition.
Awards included one gold, four silvers and one bronze honor for the publication. All of these awards came in the “Online Exclusively” category.
Since launching in 2019, The Recombobulation Area has won 19 awards from the Milwaukee Press Club, including four gold, nine silver and six bronze honors. This is the fourth consecutive year in which The Recombobulation Area has received a gold honor, and the most awards the publication has received in a single year.
The awards were announced on Friday, May 9, at the Gridiron Awards dinner at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee. Oshkosh native Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO of Axios, was named the club’s 2025 Sacred Cat Award honoree. The club also honored its 2025 Headliners community service award winners, Mark Murphy, retiring Green Bay Packers president and CEO; and Sherrie Tussler, CEO Emeritus of the Hunger Task Force. The Headliner awards recognize Wisconsin leaders from politics, business, sports, religion, entertainment, education and the media.
See the full list of winners from this year’s professional and collegiate competitions here.
Angela Lang, executive director at Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) — and a regular contributor at The Recombobulation Area for several years — won the Gold award for Best Single Editorial, Statement of Editorial Position or Opinion for her column, “The tragedy and disappointment of the RNC in Milwaukee.” This is Lang’s second consecutive year winning an award in this category, and her first gold honor.
Dan Shafer, founder of The Recombobulation Area, won five awards in the 2024 competition, including four silver awards and one bronze. Categories and awards include:
Silver:
Best Blog: Dan Shafer, “The Recombobulation Area”
Best Long Hard Feature Story: Dan Shafer, “Joy and Desperation in the Fox Valley”
Best Single Editorial, Statement of Editorial Position or Opinion: Dan Shafer, “‘It’s a new day in Wisconsin.’ Your votes made that happen.”
Best Business or Consumer Story or Series: Dan Shafer, “SPECIAL REPORT: RNC bookings “underwhelming” and a “failure,” event venues and restaurants raise concerns”
Bronze:
Best Multi-Story Coverage of a Single Feature Topic or Event: Dan Shafer, “Wisconsin’s fight for new legislative maps”
Shafer has now won a total of 23 Milwaukee Press Club awards dating back to 2011. Along with 16 at The Recombobulation Area, awards were won while on staff at the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine and ThirdCoast Digest.
This year, all of The Recombobulation Area’s awards are shared with Civic Media, which acquired The Recombobulation Area in August 2024.
Civic Media’s Earl Ingram was also honored by the Milwaukee Press Club, winning the Gold award for “Best Regularly-Scheduled Audio Program” for “The Earl Ingram Show.”
The Milwaukee Press Club is the oldest continuously operating press club in North America, formally established in 1885. Learn more about this year’s honorees in the Milwaukee Press Club’s Once A Year online magazine.
The Recombobulation Area is an opinion column and online publication covering news and politics in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. The Milwaukee-based publication features in-depth analysis, incisive commentary, original reporting, and more. Launched in 2019 as a part-time project by Shafer, The Recombobulation Area has grown to reach thousands of subscribers and millions of readers, and is now regularly featured online and on the radio as part of Civic Media.
Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.
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Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer and at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social.
These awards are so well deserved thank you everyone who puts amazing work in these articles!
Wonderful -- congrats!