From the release:

David Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media Company, announced Loretta Tofani the 2008 recipient of the Michael Kelly Award at a ceremony Thursday night in Washington. She was honored for her series on unsafe working conditions in China written for The Salt Lake Tribune.

The $25,000 award, which celebrates its 5th Anniversary this year, is given annually to a journalist whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly's own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth. Kelly, who was the editor of two Atlantic Media publications, The Atlantic and National Journal, was killed while covering the war in Iraq in 2003. ...

Five judges comprised this year’s Michael Kelly Award selection panel: Peter Beinart, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason.tv and Reason.com; Charles Green, editor of National Journal; Ruth Marcus, editorial writer and columnist of The Washington Post; and Cullen Murphy, editor-at-large of Vanity Fair.

In other award news, Washington Times photographer Mary F. Calvert has won the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for International Photojournalism.

Among the Livingston Award finalists, just announced: Sydney Freedberg, Jr., National Journal; David Greene, NPR; Dave Jamieson, Washington City Paper; Christina Larson, The Washington Monthly; Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times; Brody Mullins, WSJ; Ariana Pekary, "The Bob Edwards Show," XM Radio; Eli Saslow, The Washington Post.

National Geographic was the big winner at last night's National Magazine Awards ceremony in New York, picking up the prestigious general excellence award (New Yorker won that for mags with a circulation between 1 and 2 million).

Other notables: Matt Taibbi won for his political columns in Rolling Stone. Atlantic Monthly earned honors for Caitlin Flanagan's columns. Mother Jones won General Excellence award for circulation between 100k to 250k (said the pregnant editor: "This is the second most exciting thing to happen to me this year!). And the Virginia Quarterly Review picked up the single-topic issue award.

FishbowlNY's Glynnis MacNicol was all over the event and after-parties

The LA Times' Don Frederick, based in the paper's DC bureau, has picked up the paper's Publisher's Prize, along with Andy Malcolm , for their work on the Top of the Ticket blog (the award is the paper's most prestigious internal prize).

LA Times Russ Stanton sent out the following note to staffers, obtained by FishbowlDC:

At the outset, they simply wanted to be unpredictable, in both subject matter and in attitude. Today, they might be the oldest Rookies of The Year, at least when it comes to internet history.
Their idea was a simple one: blog from Washington and Los Angeles
about the most historic presidential campaign in more than a half
century, taking advantage of our offices on both coasts to give
readers around the country near 'round-the-clock commentary and
insight.

And boy, have they (I regularly get emails from Andy in the wee hours
of the morning). They have broken news, done Q&As with our correspondents from the trail, cracked jokes, conducted reader polls and made Top of The Ticket the most interesting online read on the campaign. And they get a lot of help from our colleagues who are laboring day in and day out on the trail, providing feeds, breaking stories and providing analysis.

Bloomberg's Janine Zacharia and WaPo's Lee Hockstader have been named Knight Journalism Fellows.

From WaPo:

Washington Post foreign correspondent Steve Fainaru was awarded the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award, which recognizes "the best newspaper or wire service reporting from abroad," at a banquet in New York on Thursday evening.

The award was given in recognition of Fainaru's reporting on private security contractors in Iraq.

From AP:

Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press and Ed Henry of CNN have won the Merriman Smith Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure.

That's the number of Pulitzers won by the Washington Post under Len Downie's leadership. Phil Bennett just told the newsroom that that's the most of any editor in the history of American journalism.

Where the WaPo took home the gold:

Public Service:

Awarded to The Washington Post for the work of Dana Priest, Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille in exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, evoking a national outcry and producing reforms by federal officials.

Breaking News Reporting:

Awarded to The Washington Post Staff for its exceptional, multi-faceted coverage of the deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, telling the developing story in print and online.

National Reporting:

Awarded to Jo Becker and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post for their lucid exploration of Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful yet sometimes disguised influence on national policy.

International reporting:

Awarded to Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post for his heavily reported series on private security contractors in Iraq that operate outside most of the laws governing American forces.

Feature Writing:

Awarded to Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post for his chronicling of a world-class violinist who, as an experiment, played beautiful music in a subway station filled with unheeding commuters.

Commentary:

Awarded to Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post for his insightful columns that explore the nation's complex economic ills with masterful clarity.

(Oh, and Bob Dylan won a Pulitzer, too)

As E&P notes, this is the second biggest sweep by a single paper ever (the NYT took home seven in 2002, thanks to its Sept. 11 coverage).

And: Does this silence some of the anti-Len Downie chatter (accurate or not) we've been hearing recently?

Congrats to all.

A Postie source confirms it for us. A big day for the paper.

Developing...