Awards Mania

A whole lot of media shaking took place Thursday on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona.

During the school’s annual “Com Day,” students got to listen to blogger-turned-author Julie Powell (Julie and Julia), Pulitzer Prize winning LA Times photographer Barbara Davison, Los Angeles Angels vp of communications Tim Mead and talent agent Danny Sussman. Then it was time for the school to honor a well-known local news personality.

Laura Diaz, until recently a fixture at CBS LA, was the guest of honor at the Hilda L. Solis Scholarship dinner and reception. She was there to accept the 2012 Nopal Award.

Read more

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

The categories are almost too numerous to keep track of. But the ever-expanding LA Press Club Awards released their complete list of finalists for their 2012 journalism awards yesterday.

In the interest of shameless self-promotion, your not-so-humble Fishie would like to note that he’s up for three awards this year in the Advocacy, Online Investigative and Best Group Blog categories for his LA Justice Report investigations into the LA Sheriff’s Department and abuse in its county jails.

Winners will be announced June 24th. Sadly, we’ll be out of town for a wedding. So if any of you out there plan on attending the award ceremony, please keep your fingers crossed on our behalf.

See the finalist list here.

In the category of 2012 Radio Journalist of the Year, KCRW’s Warren Olney is surrounded. Per this weekend’s preliminary announcement of finalists for the LA Press Club’s 54th SoCal Journalism Awards, his fellow nominees are all sixth-tenths of a click down the FM dial: KPCC’s Larry Mantle, Stephanie O’Neill, Molly Peterson and Frank Stolze.

Dylan Howard, last year’s Entertainment Journalist of the Year, is nominated once again in that category. The only difference is that this time around, he’s representing celebuzz.com rather than Star magazine and Radar Online. For the repeat, he will have to best Nikki Finke, THR’s Alex Ben Block and LA Weekly film critic Karina Longworth.

Meanwhile, despite a recent LA riots coverage snafu, Longworth’s alt-weekly colleague Simone Wilson is in the Online Journalist of the Year bracket, alongside a bunch of political outlet heavyweights. She’ll have to beat CNN.com’s Michael Martinez, Truthdig’s Chris Hedges, The Huffington Post’s Robert David Jaffe and the enviroreporter.com tandem of Michael Collins and Denise Ann Duffield.

Read more

The original punk master is back at it again.

Actor Ashton Kutcher will make his return to Punk’D as part of the 2012 MTV Movie Awards pre-show on June 3 at 8 p.m. The show returned this season following a five-year hiatus.

The two Hollywood celebrities that Kutcher will punk haven’t been announced yet.

Regardless of the celebs involved, nothing will top his ongoing punk of Demi Moore.

 

In addition to their new home at Staples Center, the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards will also have a new start time: 8 p.m.

The reason?

President Barack Obama will be making his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

“We will be airing the VMAs on Thursday, September 6th from 8-10 PM as opposed to our traditional 9-11 PM time slot to avoid conflict with the Democratic National Convention proceedings that evening,” a MTV spokesperson told Deadline.com.

And in case you’re wondering why the VMA’s are on Thursday instead of Sunday, it would have been going head-to-head with the first NBC Sunday night NFL game of the season — Peyton Manning‘s debut with the Denver Broncos.

After two years at the Nokia Theatre, the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards are headed across the street to Staples Center on Sept. 6.

The VMAs originating from arenas is nothing new as the AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami hosted the show in 2004 and 2005. It’s hard to argue with the move following a record 12.4 million viewers in 2011.

“STAPLES Center is incredibly excited to have the opportunity to host the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards,” Lee Zeidman, senior vice president and general manager of Staples Center said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our relationship with our partners at MTV and hosting this one of kind music event here at L.A. LIVE.”

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists appears to be operating on old newspaper print-days time. Even though the winners of their 2012 column competition were officially determined May 5, they have only just got around to officially posting the details on their website.

As a result, The Daily Beast is this evening congratulating John Avlon for his second consecutive win in the category of online, 100,000-plus monthly uniques. Meanwhile, LA Weekly editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske early this afternoon tweeted out her heartiest congrats to Gendy Alimurung, victorious in the 50,000-plus print, general interest bracket. From the judges’ comments:

“To begin with, Gendy is a wonderful writer and storyteller. She also is a smart reporter with an eye for detail and empathy for her subjects. All of those talents come through in her pieces. For a columnist, she is also modest. She lets her subjects come to the fore and presents them with flair. Excellent pieces through and through.”

Read more

The magazine’s dine editor Lesley Bargar Suter scored a win in the ‘Food Coverage in a General Interest Publication’ category. Her prize-winning features were “Chinese Food in L.A.,” “Breakfast in LA,” and the “Food Lovers Guide.”

Said Suter of the award:

It’s an incredible honor to be recognized by the James Beard Foundation. There’s never been a more exciting time to be covering food in Los Angeles, and the nomination is as much an acknowledgment of the city’s vibrant culinary scene as it is a nod to the work of our magazine’s talented team of writers, editors, and designers.

This was the first James Beard award for Suter, but not Los Angeles magazine. Restaurant critic Patrick Kuh took home Beard awards in 2001 and 2011.

People magazine won “Best Celebrity & Entertainment Cover” for its royal wedding issue in the American Society of Magazine Editors’ annual Cover of the Year competition. People was also a finalist in the same category for its tribute to Liz Taylor after her passing last year.

New York won the big “Best Cover” award for its shot of an elderly pregnant woman posing naked a la Demi Moore.

Full list of Steve Jobs-themed winners and cover shots here.

CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California announced the winners of its 13th annual Ruben Salazar Journalism Awards this week. The awards are named after the late, great LA Times columnist and given to the best print, broadcast, ratio and photographic works that deal with Latino issues in California. LA Times staffer Richard Fausset won in the print category for his series  “The New Latino South.”

KCET’s Yvette Cabrera and producer Saul Gonzalez won in the TV category for their story “The Border Between Them.”

Curiously, there were no winners in the Radio, Photography or Commentary categories.