Yes, that does seem like an odd headline given that Orange County is not located in neither the city nor county of Los Angeles. Despite this, three Weeklings were awarded first-place plaques at the L.A. Press Club's 51st annual SoCal Journalism Awards ceremonies Sunday evening at the Sheraton Universal.
In the division for daily and weekly newspapers with a circulation under 100,000, longtime Weekly theater critic Joel Beers, who is also a Fullerton-based playwright, won first-place honors in the Entertainment Reviews/Criticism/Column category for his 2008 pieces titled “Bloodless Passion,” “Float On,” “Hare Raising” and “Wacky Iraqi.”
The L.A. Press Club, which is composed of radio, print, online and television journalists based in Southern California, does not judge contest entries itself but farms them out to officers of other press clubs around the country. In a rare move, judges named no other finalists in Beers' category and commented, “Beers writes lively and thoughtful theater reviews with a strong sense of authority and tone to match a variety of material.”
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In the Entertainment News or Feature category, Matt Coker won a first-place plaque for the October 2008 cover story “Rock Angel,” which was about the hell Garden Grove filmmaker David Di Sabatino has gone through (and is still going through) to bring his documentary on the “Father of Christian Rock” Larry Norman to the big screen.
According
to the judges, “This is a beautiful example of the rare well-written,
tension-filled story about the artistic process. It's also extremely
entertaining. Not only are Coker's descriptions of the characters
involved, but in the implicit suggestion that in the entertainment
industry, it's hard to follow Christian principles.”
Art director Kelly Lewis
took the top prize in the Design category for her exemplary work on the
October 2008 cover and inside layout of the October '08 “Best of OC”
edition. In the alternative newsweekly business, no staff member works
harder (and longer) on “Best of …” issues than art directors.
The
judges saw this when they commented, “Blurb-heavy packages are always a
design challenge, but a fun, bright, celebratory cover, with clean and
consistent internal design,
makes for a winning combination. Extra points for making spot illustrations so distinct from ads.”
Of course, it's an honor just to be nominated. The Weekly's other nominees this year were Daffodil Altan for Reporter of the Year; Gustavo Arellano for News Feature; R. Scott Moxley for News Feature and Columnist; and Nick Schou for Investigative Series.
It was an even bigger night for the Weekly's sister paper, LA Weekly, the winner of six first-place awards in the division for daily or weekly newspapers with a circulation higher than 100,000. Three of those awards went to
staff writer Christine Pelisek, who was also runner up for print journalist of the year.
Comedian Paula Poundstone
opened up the festivities, which were held on the 21st floor of the hotel with a
panoramic view of the not-yet-burning Los Angeles below, by trying to tell jokes to an
audience paying more attention to their chicken dinners. Another
stand-up, Bill Maher, received more laughs before he presented the
President's Award to Arianna Huffington, who swore it is not the
Huffington Post that is killing print journalism.
KCBS political
reporter Linda Breakstone gave a sloshy speech in honor of veteran LA
Daily News city hall reporter Rick Orlov, who received both the Joseph
M Quinn Award and a county proclamation from LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. The evening ended with Judea Pearl giving the honor named
after his slain son, the Daniel Pearl Award, to the LA Times' Robyn
Dixon, who accepted via a short video from her post in Africa.
In between those folks, individual award winners were announced from the podium by KNBC's Ana Garcia, KABC's George Pennacchio, KCRW's Joe Morgenstern, the Press Club's Anthea Raymond and Alex Ben Block, Poundstone and the Weekly's own Arellano, who–thankfully–provided updates on the Lakers game and post-game rioting.
The full list of winners is here.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.