Best of the West announced the results of its 2011 journalism contest and we have some local winners here in SoCal. Some highlights: No surprise, OC Weekly‘s Gustavo Arellano picked up second place in the special topic column writing category for his “¡Ask a Mexican!” columns.

The LA Times Francine Orr and Don Kelsen were first place winners for multimedia storytelling for their heartbreaking video on baby Dylan Catania and his doctors’ efforts to sever half his brain to save his life. The Times’ Sachi Cunningham and Jeff Amlotte, meanwhile, won third place for video storytelling for their look at the shrimping industry in  New Orleans in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.

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Jill Stewart penned a rebuttal to James Rainey’s “take-down” piece about the LA Weekly.

Since LATimes.com is crashing on and off due to the Michael Jackson deluge, we have posted then entire piece after the break, but here’s an excerpt:

Rainey accuses me of being an ideologue. Isn’t he talking about himself? I suspect that he cannot abide a mixed-bag political mutt like me, a lifelong Democrat raised in a working-class union household, yet one who finds the Democratic leaders now running most of L.A.’s political and civic institutions to be doing an exceptionally poor job of it. That’s news, and we at the Weekly will continue to cover it.

After their servers catch up – the story should be here.

Previously on FBLA:

James Rainey‘s column today in the LAT ends like this:

I don’t see the Weekly regaining its equilibrium as long as Stewart remains in charge of the news section. It’s likely that a new top editor will be brought in from outside.

But no one I talked to expects the bombastic Ms. Stewart to be going anywhere any time soon.

So Jill Stewart sent us this letter which we have printed in full:

Hi there,

I wanted to tell my colleagues and friends in journalism and blogging that James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times did not contact me for his take-down attempt column about me today, published during the very same week in which news-side stories I assigned and edited blew the Times out of the water at the Los Angeles Press Club awards. These awards, announced five days ago, were judged entirely by journalists in other major cities around the nation to avoid local favoritism. And then yesterday, a young reporter who won a major award for a piece that I assigned and edited beat The New York Times and was in Washington, D.C. collecting his award.

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The Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has picked six winners of SPJ’s Distinguished Journalist Award:

Beth Barrett, Daily News
Barrett was the first to report on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s affair with former Telemundo newscaster Mirthala Salinas.

Bob Banfield, KABC-TV
Joined KABC-TV in 1967, works in the Inland Empire bureau.

John Rabe, KPCC
After hosting All Things Considered and reporting on health care and housing issues, Rabe now hosts his own show, Off-Ramp, a weekly program about news, arts and life in Southern California.

Tom Tugend, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

contributing editor for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles and West Coast correspondent for The Jerusalem Post in Israel, Jewish Chronicle in Britain, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in New York.

Scott Glover and Matt Lait, L.A. Times (Freedom of Information Award)

Lait is now legal affairs editor overseeing coverage of courts and police, and Glover is an investigative reporter in the city-county bureau.

to honor at its banquet next April.