Congrats to all finalists (so far) for the LA Press Club’s 55th annual SoCal Journalism Awards, to be presented at the Biltmore Hotel Sunday June 23. In perusing the honor rolls, here are some of the categories that most intrigued us:

Journalist of the Year – Print (Over 50,000 Circulation):

The name we were not completely familiar with – alongside those of Gustavo Arellano (OC Weekly), Matthew Belloni (THR), Gene Maddaus (LA Weekly) and Matthew Garrahan (Financial Times) – is U-T San Diego’s Fred Dickey (no relation to TMZ managing editor Josh). Even if this Dickey wins, he will still have a tough road to hoe in that department at home. According to his website bio, microbiologist wife Kathleen has lent her name to nine U.S. patents.

Journalist of the Year – Online

These are dark days for Patch, with a conference call last Friday as reported by Romenesko revealing more rough tactical agenda items. But here in SoCal, the sun is shining on Rancho Santa Margarita local editor Martin Henderson. He is nominated in this category together with Dennis Romero (LA Weekly), Dylan Howard (Celebuzz), Chris Hedges (Truthdig) and Catherine Green (Neon Tommy). This guy has paid his dues, winning his first journalism award in high school and starting at the LA Times all the way back in1990.

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Remember that brief March 1 New York Post “Page Six” item? Here’s a quick refresher:

Jimmy Kimmel is already being lined up to host next year’s Oscars, we’re told. One source said, “Jimmy is favored to host the Oscars next year; ABC has been pushing him for the role.” The late-night host already seems a shoo-in for the job after he earned his best post-awards show ratings on Sunday night.

We’ve been saying for several years that the logical host for the annual ABC-TV telecast is the one within walking-commute distance. Now that Seth MacFarlane has confirmed what pretty much everyone in Hollywood already knew, it’s hopefully only a matter of very little time before Kimmel finally gets his outside-the-special-box shot.

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Tonight in Naples, Florida, LA Times reporter Kenneth R. Weiss and photographer Rick Loomis will accept a check for $10,000 and the Edward J. Meeman Award for their five-part series “Beyond 7 Billion.” It’s the winner of the 2012 Scripps Howard Foundation Award for Environmental Reporting.

The pair’s look at what it will take for the earth’s human population to preserve the planet’s ecosystem beat out reports by InsideClimate News and Pro Publica. The fact that the former recently won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting makes this LAT victory especially sweet.

Other winners to be honored tonight in South Florida, where the awards ceremony was moved from its previous Washington D.C. home, are journalists with the Chicago Tribune (Public Service Reporting), The Denver Post (Breaking News) and the PBS program Need to Know (Television/Cable In-Depth National and International Coverage):

John Carlos Frey, John Larson and Brian Epstein‘s documentation in the Need to Know episode “Crossing the Line at the Border” of abuses by the U.S. Border Patrol led members of Congress to call for an internal review, and the United Nations to address what it called “an international issue of concern.”

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When the nominations for the 65th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards are announced at 5:35 a.m. on Thursday July 18, a big change will be the number of categories honoring interactive TV. From Variety awards editor Jon Weisman‘s Monday item:

Chief among the changes is the establishment of a competitive award for outstanding interactive program, saluting either a standalone experience or one that serves as a companion to a TV program. In the Emmy context, “interactive” denotes anything that encourages proactive engagement from the audience — not to be confused with video content delivered via broadband, such as Netflix’s House of Cards.

This category can have zero or multiple awards as determined by the Academy’s 12-year-old interactive media peer group, which currently counts 627 members. The other new interactive TV awards categories cover multi-platform storytelling and visual experience/visual design, to go along with the existing brackets of original interactive program (not tied to an existing TV show) and social TV experience.

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From humble byline beginnings at Steele Canyon High School in east San Diego, Marissa A. Evans has blossomed into a rising journalism star. She is currently a senior at Milwaukee’s Marquette University, where she launched a local student chapter for the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and also started online magazine In Hue.

This summer, in the middle of her latest intern assignment, Evans will be traveling to the NABJ’s annual convention in Orlando to accept the 2013 Student Journalist of the Year prize. From a recent report in her hometown newspaper:

Evans is slated to intern this summer at The Seattle Times as a metro reporter. She previously interned at U-T San Diego in 2010 and also at The Washington Post, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Star Tribune in Minneapolis. She also is an alumna of The New York Times Student Journalism Institute.

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The piece of advice from Evelyn McDonnell (pictured) that likely resounded most last Friday with students at Beloit Memorial High School is the honoree’s assertion that 30 years from now, no one will remember whether they were asked out to the prom. ‘Really!?’ we can almost hear half the room exclaiming to themselves, with a mixture of relief and disbelief.

The Glendale native, who moved east at a young age and presently resides in San Pedro, was there to be inducted into her high school Hall of Fame. Her fourth book, Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways, is due out in July. From a report in the Beloit Daily News:

Now with a young son in Los Angeles public schools, McDonnell said she’s worried about cuts to public education and said she was very thankful she was able to have a public education. Although she went on to private higher educational institutions, BMHS was the foundation of her learning.

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Remember all that business last spring about The Hobbit’s 48-frames-per-second technology? Among the reporters covering the topic at that time was Studio City-based freelance writer Hugh Hart for Wired magazine.

While Peter Jackson’s 48-fps experiment didn’t exactly set the movie business on fire, it has paved the way for Hart to travel this summer to New York City for the S.I. Newhouse School Mirror Awards, which honor the best reporting about digital media. His Wired feature is a nominee in the Best Single Article category alongside The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone, Media Matters’ Joe Strupp and three others.

Hart did a great job in the Wired piece of framing the historical Hollywood context, moving in his first two paragraphs from a current studio to Thomas Alva Edison circa 1890. The reporter also landed the holy grail for this sort of piece – an interview with James Cameron. (Hart also spoke with visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull and several others.)

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El Diario reporter Sandra Rodríguez Nieto will be honored with the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism at this year’s Southern California Journalism Awards in Los Angeles.

Nieto covered political corruption and drug violence in the Mexican crime capital of Juárez, along the Texas border, for El Diario from 2003 until 2012–during which time two of her colleagues were killed for doing similar reporting.

“I didn’t think a lot about the danger,” she says, ice water, no doubt coursing vigorously through her veins. “I was convinced that my job as a journalist was the most important thing.”

Nieto will accept her award on June 23 in L.A.

Los Angeles magazine continues to earn the attention of the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME)–by earning two nominations for the prestigious ASME Ellie awards yesterday. Los Angeles is a finalist in both the “Personal Service” and “Leisure Interests” categories for its October 2012 package on Plastic Surgery in L.A. and for its November 2012 Food Lover’s Guide To L.A.

National Geographic led all magazines this year with seven Ellie nominations. Winners will be announced May 2.

Full list of finalists after the jump:

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Former ESPN anchor and current Good Morning America host Robin Roberts will be honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2013 ESPYS in Los Angels on July 17.

The award is presented annually to “individuals whose contributions transcend sports,” and Roberts definitely fits the bill.

In the past six years, Roberts has battled and defeated not only breast cancer but myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a rare blood disorder.  Roberts was able to bring public awareness to both diseases during her fight and recovery. After five months off following a bone marrow transplant from her sister, Roberts returned to GMA last month.

“Robin brings an amazing amount of energy, compassion and determination to everything she does.  Those qualities made her an incredible asset during her time here at ESPN, and they have served her well as she battled the terrible health challenges that she’s had to face,” said ESPN president John Skipper. “Robin’s accomplishments in so many areas – as an athlete, a broadcaster, a cancer survivor and more – demonstrate her ability to shine regardless of adversity and we could not be more proud to honor her as the recipient of this year’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award.”

The 2o13 ESPYS will take place once again from the Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live.