The Atlantic earned two awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors on Thursday: Best Web site and Best Essay and Criticism for Ta-Nehisi Coates‘s “Fear of a Black President” piece in the September issue.

“I’m so happy for Ta-Nehisi and the entire team at The Atlantic,” M. Scott Havens, president of The Atlantic, said in a release. “It’s wonderful to be recognized by our peers for excellence in one of our oldest journalistic forms, the essay, and one of our newest—the work we do every day on TheAtlantic.com.”

Coates’s piece, an analysis on the conflict he says Barack Obama faces as the first minority president, was up against other entries from Foreign Policy, New York, The New Yorker and Orion.

The Heritage Foundation and the Franklin Center awarded the 2nd annual Breitbart Award to blogger Michelle Malkin at a ceremony in Orland Thursday night. It probably helped that Malkin was also the keynote speaker at the event. It’s an award given to a journalist who best represents the ideals of the late Andrew Breitbart.

While I’m SURE it’s prestigious award and not to take anything away from Ms. Malkin’s accolade, it does seems there are a hell of a lot of awards out there these days. And it gives me an idea.  Read more

Politico Chief Political Columnist Roger Simon has won first place in the 2013 National Headline Awards in the print division for “a special or feature column on one subject by one individual.”

Simon’s winning columns involve gun control and involve the Sandy Hook, Columbine and Aurora shootings.

“I am especially grateful for this award because the politics of gun control is a subject I have cared about for a long time,” Simon said in a release dispatched by Politico today. “It’s an issue that’s now more important than ever in America, and I’m honored to have my columns be a part of the vital conversation the country is having right now.”

Simon’s columns in this entry are: “Cowardly Pols Killers’ Top Allies,” “Innocent Victims Too Numerous to Recall” and “Post-Massacre, We’re Still Waiting for ‘the Good Guys.’”

Today Columbia University announced the 2013 Pulitzer Prizes on recommendation by the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Criticism: WaPo‘s Philip Kennicott “for his eloquent and passionate essays on art and the social forces that underlie it, a critic who always strives to make his topics and targets relevant to readers.”

Prize: $10,000

The competition: “Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times for her searching television criticism that often becomes a springboard for provocative comments on the culture at large, and Manohla Dargis of The New York Times for her enlightening movie criticism, vividly written and showing deep understanding of the business and art of filmmaking.”

Thought to be one of the best education reporters that CQ Roll Call has had in awhile, Lauren Smith has been named a Spencer Fellow by Columbia University. She’ll spend the 2013-2014 academic year at Columbia working on her reporting project.

Congratulations to Smith!

Anne Hoy, executive editor of CQ News, sent out the memo today.

Read more

For her reporting on the 2012 presidential election, The Atlantic‘s Molly Ball was selected as this year’s winner of the Toner Prize.

“Ms. Ball’s coverage is a superb example of journalism that helps us understand our electoral process and illuminates the people and policies that shape us as a nation,” said Lorraine Branham, dean of Syracuse University’s S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, in a release. “This is reporting with the engaging detail and informed insights that were hallmarks of the reporting of Robin Toner.”

The Toner Prize, sponsored by the Newhousse School of Public Communications, carries $5,000 and is part of the larger Robin Toner Program in Political Reporting. Toner was the first woman to serve as the national political correspondent for the NYT.

The 2012 competition for the Toner Prize drew 118 entries, according to the release.

Congratulations to Ball.

Family and friends of Robin Toner will gather tonight to honor her memory and watch as the Toner Prize is awarded. The event is part of The Robin Toner Program in Political Reporting by the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.

The prize comes with $5,000 and is named for Robin, a graduate of Syracuse University and the first woman to be national political correspondent for the NYT.

Robin’s twins, 15-year-old Nora and Jacob, are going to hand out the award and announce the honorable mentions. Many of Toner’s reporter friends will be coming into town to attend the dinner. It’s been an entire election cycle since she died in 2008. The 2012 election was the first without a Robin Toner byline since before 1980.

HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelious will speak. Those expected to attend include: Jill Abramson, executive editor, NYT; Rick Berke of the NYT; Janet Elder, deputy managing editor, NYT; David Leonhardt, Washington bureau chief, NYT; Marty Baron, executive editor of WaPo; Tom Edsall, formerly of WaPo and now professor of journalism at Columbia University; Dan Balz and Karen Tumulty of WaPo, Mike McCurry, former WH press secretary; Larry Kramer, publisher of USA Today; Andrea Mitchell, NBC News; Jerry Seib, WSJ, and Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

The dinner is being held at the Barbara Jordan Conference Center at the Kaiser Family Foundation in downtown Washington. A reception begins at 6 p.m., followed by dinner.

Judging for the prize… Read more

NPR wins the Peabody award for their coverage of the conflict in Syria and for an audio chronicle of a teenager’s ambition to compete with the first female U.S. Olympic boxing team, produced by Radio Diaries and broadcast on All Things Considered.

International correspondents Kelly McEvers, based in Beirut, and Deb Amos, a roving correspondent who’s spent three decades covering the region, led NPR’s reports during frequent trips into Syria and from along the border in Turkey and Lebanon. Interviews included Assad regime officials led to the unexpected discovery of unity among Muslim and Christian rebels.

McEvers and Amos share the award with… Read more

Street Sense, the D.C.-based newspaper focusing on the homeless, is now taking submissions for its David Pike Awards. The awards, now four years old, are meant to honor reporting “that changes perceptions about homelessness, highlights issues that contribute to or result from homelessness, and shines light on possible solutions,” according to a release.

The Pike Awards, named in memory of Street Sense Board Member David Pike, have four categories: breaking news, investigative/feature stories, opinion pieces and photography. Anyone can submit a piece for consideration as long as the entry covers the D.C. metro region or national policy as it relates to homelessness and was published between Jan. 1, 2012 and Mar. 31, 2013.

The deadline for submissions is April 25. They can be sent to davidpikeawards@gmail.com.

CNN President Jeff Zucker gave a warm shout-out to the network this morning for winning a Peabody Award as well as the David Kaplan Award. He also complimented Chris Cuomo for his winning a Peabody for coverage of Hurricane Sandy while at ABC.

See the internal memo. Read more