LA Press Club: Does Something Stink? No, Says Finke

Jeffery Wells, of Hollywood Elsewhere, sent Deadline Hollywood Daily’s Nikki Finke a (kinda) congratulatory e-mail that asks whether L.A. Press Club Award winners are chosen based on how many beers they throw back with the judges. Here’s the exchange:

Nikki-

Congrats — good for you, good work, hats off.

That said, I have to say I’m detecting a culture of clubbiness among the winners. I get the feeling they’ve all hung and schmoozed with each other (or with LAPC board members) all year at various drinky LAPC gatherings. I ‘m not saying each and every winner attended said gatherings and/or has cozy/schmoozy relationships with this or that LAPC board member, but it kind of feels that way.

The L.A. Press Club board members, I take it, are not the panel of judges who select the winners and runners-up in each category. I’m searching around as I write this, but do you have a link to the names of the judges?

I’m presuming that the LAPC board members and SoCal Journalism Award judges are different entities and don’t answer to or consort with each other because “entertainment historian” Alex Ben Block is listed as an LAPC board member and yet he was also given an LAPC SoCal Journalism Award for “Online Entertainment News/Feature/ Commentary” for a HollywoodToday.net piece called “Rocky Underdog Origin: A Studio Myth.”

I think it’s fair to ask these questions. I would appreciate some help (insight, disputations….anything) soon. Thanks.

Jeffrey Wells
Hollywood Elsewhere

And here is her response. Note the perfectly Finkian opening line:

your email wound up in my spam folder.
i’ve never socialized with one member of the LA Press Club. i’ve never even met a single member.
no one i know belongs to the LA Press Club.
my understanding from my own newspaper is that the club itself does NOT judge the entries. i was told they send out the entries to another major press club who judges it.

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