Native Angeleno Ben Ehrenreich won the Journalism category for his Harper’s Magazine story “Drip, Jordan: Israel’s water war with Palestine.” We’re awfully proud of him, just as we are fellow FishbowlLA editor Matthew Fleischer, who was a finalist in the Journalism category.

Other Southern Californians to take home PEN awards include Suzanne Jill Levine of Santa Barbara for the Translation category, Hollywood talents Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig for the screenplay Bridesmaids, Alex Ganza, Howard Gordon, & Gideon Raff, who won the Teleplay category for the pilot episode of Homeland.

A full list of winners can be found after the jump.

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At last night’s 54th Annual SoCal Journalism Awards, the big winners were the Los Angeles Times and KPCC 89.3 FM, with eight first prizes each. The LAT was led by photographer Francine Orr, who won three awards (Photojournalist of the Year, Entertainment Photo, Photo Essay), while KPCC’s haul included a pair for Molly Peterson (News or Feature Short Form, Use of Sound). KCRW, KPCC’s main competitor in the LA public radio space, failed to win any first-place prizes.

On the Hollywood trades side, it was THR five, TheWrap two and Deadline.com one, with Variety essentially abstaining. Kim Masters won a Journalist of the Year prize as well as another for her article with Daniel Miller about high-stakes Hollywood poker. Meanwhile, for TheWrap, it was not a main reporter but rather blog network contributor Richard Stellar who claimed both nods, for Weblog, Individual (tied with Danielle Berrin, Jewish Journal) and Best Facebook Presence by an Individual.

Other leading first-place winners at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel Sunday night, each capturing six such awards, were the Los Angeles Business Journal, KCET’s SoCal Connected and LA Weekly. Although in one case with the Weekly, film critic Karina Longworth was the only journalist nominated in the Daily/Weekly Newspapers category of Entertainment Reviews/Criticism/Columns.

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FishbowlLA’s Matthew Fleischer, i.e. me, was on Sonali Kolhatkar‘s Uprising Radio show on KPFK this morning–talking about my recent “LA Justice Report” investigation into deputy abuse of inmates in the LA County Jail system. Listen to the segment here or watch the video above.

Yes, I know. I need a haircut.

Local literary journal Slake celebrated the publication on its second issue with a bash at the Track 16 art gallery in Santa Monica. Well over 700 partygoers showed for the shindig, which included readings by Slake contributors Rachel Resnick, James Greer, John Albert, Amy Scattergood, and FishbowlLA’s own Matthew Fleischer. We were bursting with pride over our little Matty, who drew laughs and hoots from the crowd with his reading of “Mushrooms to Mecca.” An excerpt:

In some countries they call pigeons squab and eat them as a delicacy. In America, we tend to let them feed on our scraps and then get pissed when they shit on our cars — a resource turned into a filthy, disease-ridden nuisance. You can learn a lot about a place by its birds.

And here’s our editor celebrating a reading well read. More pics after the jump.

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International ego booster of the day. The French/Swiss paper Le Courrier has a profile of Spot.us’ journalistic efforts in Los Angeles that leads with mention of this Fishie’s new blog “The Daily Vitamin.”

Marianne a donné 16 dollars, Mark 17, tout comme Pandora. Ari, de son côté, n’a versé que 4,76 dollars, un peu moins que ce qu’il avait avancé en septembre pour un projet similaire. Avec neuf autres personnes et deux entreprises, ces donateurs totalisaient jeudi une somme de 737,72 dollars. C’est bien, mais il en manque tout de même 262,28 pour que le journaliste Matthew Fleischer se lance dans sa grande enquête sur la lente – mais tangible, assure-t-il – amélioration de la qualité de vie à Los Angeles, sa ville. Une métropole célèbre pour n’avoir ni trottoirs ni espaces verts. Matthew Fleischer, un ancien du LA Weekly, travaille pour le site californien spot.us. Mise sur pied en 2008, cette plateforme à but non lucratif est pionnière dans le journalisme à financement participatif («crowdfunding»). Un reporter propose un sujet, dont le pitch est affiché sur le site, et le public donne ce qu’il veut pour le financer – les sommes vont de quelques dollars au cinquième du total à rassembler.

Now, our French is admittedly a bit remedial–but, loosely translated, we’re pretty sure this story is saying “Matthew Fleischer is a super-fucking-awesome journalist who’s more entertaining than Jerry Lewis and Gerard Depardieu put together. It would be an honor to send our sister and cousins and even our grandma–if he’s into it–to share his bed.”

Or something like that.

Spot.us, the non-profit journalistic website run by David Cohn, has just launched two new complimentary projects in Los Angeles, funded by the California Endowment. The first, called the LA Vitamin Report, is an 8-part multimedia series devoted to “quality-of-life” issues in Los Angeles. Alex Schmidt will be the project manager. Schmidt is a radio veteran who has worked as a staff reporter at WHYY, a web producer at The New Yorker, a producer at Marketplace, and a web producer at 20th TV Fox.

Schmidt’s first story for the project–about homeless children commuting hours across the city to go to school–just aired on the Madeleine Brand show today. Read more about it here.

Spot.us is also launching a complementary blog called The Daily Vitamin, which will cover the same terrain as the multimedia effort. Yours truly, Matthew Fleischer, has been named the blog editor. I’ll be posting a few times a week on issues ranging from land use to public health. I might even throw some flaneuring in there for nostalgia sake.

Previously on FBLA: Spot.us To Launch New Los Angeles ‘Quality-of-Life’ Project

On this, Columbus Day 2010, it gives me great pleasure to be able to introduce myself as FishbowlLA’s newest blogger.

When I moved from Toronto to Los Angeles in the late fall of 1993, I did what any self-respecting Canadian would: I drove around at night with the convertible top down, marveling at the balmy low-50′s temperatures. As winter season approaches, a new wave of Canadian and Scandinavian west coast transplants will no doubt soon be cruising down Sunset Boulevard in similar fashion.

Since my arrival in L.A., I have hung out at the House of Blues Foundation Room with Jimi Hendrix Jr.; helped filmmaker Brian Herzlinger land a date with Drew Barrymore; felt the wrath of Mel Gibson after authoring an article about video piracy; and become fascinated with North Korea as a result of starting a grassroots Twitter and WordPress campaign in 2009 on behalf of detained Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

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Matthew Fleischer, investigative journalist, alt-weekly editor and unapologetic chick magnet is now our third here at the ol’ Fishbowl. His hobbies include drinking, traveling and contemplating both. He’s nice to small animals and even nicer to large ones. He enjoys walking in his free time.

Laid off from LA Weekly and on board when City Beat sank, Matt’s been in the thick of the carnage of the last two years. Because of this he’s grown tired of print newspapers laying him off so he’s decided to get a real job in the blogosphere.

Welcome Matt to our bowl! We’re happy to have him.

Previously on FBLA: LA Weekly’s Latest Layoff Party

We crashed the LA Weekly’s Laid Off Party in Glendale last night and then subjected all the ‘guests of honor’ to a series of photographs. Way to make ourselves popular. Pictured are Matthew Fleischer, Laura Steele, David Caplan, Pandora Young, Marc Cooper and Sharan Street.

While trying to wrangle up the recently unemployed we overheard,”Do you want a picture of the last round of layoffs too? They’re here.”

Damn.