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The blog LAist yesterday posted an interview with L.A. Weekly Staff Writer Daniel Hernandez, who recently won the 2006 Emerging Journalist award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Before he joined the Weekly in March, Hernandez was a reporter at The Los Angeles Times -- he profiled "¡Ask a Mexican!" columnist Gustavo Arellano back in February -- but he says writing for an alt-weekly is tougher. "At The Times I was just challenging the institutional and cultural barriers of an ultimately very conservative place. That was exhausting, and not very fulfilling," Hernandez says. "At the Weekly, there's all this freedom, and that means you have to be more careful and more thoughtful."