Awards

Last night, UCLA's Anderson School of Management presented its 2009 Gerald Loeb Awards at the New York Athletic Club.

The New York Times was the big winner of the night, with business and financial editor Lawrence Ingrassia receiving the Lawrence Minard Editor Award and the paper and its magazine winning three of the 12 competition categories including the Large Newspaper and Magazine categories and the Best Writing award, which went to Gretchen Morgenson. (Rick Rothacker of The Charlotte Observer also won in the Best Writing category.)

The Wall Street Journal and CBS News' "60 Minutes" both took home two awards each, and now defunct business magazine Portfolio earned one win in the Feature Writing category for Michael Lewis' story "The End."

A full list of the winners after the jump

Earlier: Loeb Award Finalists Announced; Times, Economist Editors Get Career Achievement Awards

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WHY, a nonprofit organization that combats hunger and poverty, recently announced the winners of its 2008 Harry Chapin Media Awards, named in honor of co-founder and singer Harry Chapin.

Although the awards, presented by WHY and Mediabistro, will be awarded at a ceremony in New York in September, only one New York media outlet was named a winner. The New York Times' Lydia Polgreen received a Judge's Award for her work on "The Spoils," an in-depth article about the Congo and the renegade troops that control the mineral-rich area.

Other award winners include The Washington Post's Debbie Cenziper and Sarah Cohen and CQ Weekly's Aliya Sternstein.

A full list of the winners after the jump

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The International Center for Journalists announced today that investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker will be awarded the group's prestigious Founders Award later this year.

Hersh, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his story exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, will pick up his prize at the ICFJ's 25th anniversary awards dinner on Nov. 12 in Washington, D.C., hosted by George Stephanopoulos.

International reporters Cao Junwu of China and Chouchou Namegabe Nabintu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo will also be honored at the November dinner with 2009 Knight International Journalism Awards. The organization said Cao, a reporter for Southern Weekend will be recognized for his work covering last year's Sichuan earthquake and the Shandong flood in 2007. Radio journalist Namegabe is being honored for her work reporting on sexual violence against women.

"Our winners this year are fearless truth-tellers who won't back down from a tough story, no matter the risks," said ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan. "These journalists tell important stories that others have shied away from."

A full release about the Knight International Journalism Award winners after the jump

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Yesterday, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the winners of its 2009 Knight News Challenge, which provides funding to innovative digital news projects submitted to the foundation.

This year, the Knight Foundation awarded a total of $5.1 million in grants to nine new projects and 17 winners from the two previous years. The largest amount of funding -- $719,500 -- went to a project called DocumentCloud, a joint venture between The New York Times and ProPublica. Talking Points Memo is also joining in the collaboration, the company said yesterday.

According to the Knight Foundation, DocumentCloud will be "a Web site that will enhance investigative reporting by making source documents easy to find, share and read" by providing "an online database of documents contributed by a consortium of news organizations, watchdog groups and bloggers, and shared with the public at large."

The project is led by Ben Koski and Aron Pilhofer of the Times and ProPublica's Scott Klein and Eric Umansky (in the picture above). Today, Eric, Aron and Scott joined in an interactive chat on Poynter.org, explaining what DocumentCloud will be.

"Too many documents today still end up on the digital equivalent of the cutting room floor," they said. "What documents journalists do post -- and of course they increasingly do -- they're PDFs, a not particularly user-friendly format. DocumentCloud is meant to make each step along the way much easier, and moreover will make the documents more journalistically valuable by showing information about them and the relations between them."

A full list of the winners and a description of their projects can be found here.

This is the third year that the Knight Foundation has held its News Challenge, and it has pledged to donate $25 million over 5 years.

Last night marked the first annual Women's Media Center Media Awards at the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation in midtown. Catered and cozy, the event took place in a small, packed room brimming with well-established female media types and bright-eyed J-school students, with a mic stand in the corner for awardees like Salon.com's Rebecca Traister, as well as hosts Gloria Steinem and WMC President Carol Jenkins. 



The evening was divided into two parts: the first honored six women in the media industry who have done outstanding work in bringing women's issues to the forefront of media coverage; the second part cued a wag of the finger at organizations and events that shed a particularly negative light upon women in the past year. "It's very important that we criticize when [women's coverage] is incomplete, but praise when it's complete," Steinem said, explaining the reason for organizing the awards this way.

In her opening remarks, Steinem also associated the media with a modern-day campfire, a place where people gather to tell stories and express themselves. "It is crucial that everyone's stories be told...the media is our campfire," she said. "And if we cannot tell our stories or have people listen to our stories, we feel alone."

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The American Society of Business Publications has announced the 20 finalists for its two Magazine of the Year awards, to be presented during the organization's National Editorial Conference next month.

In addition to the Magazine of the Year awards, the ASBPE will also present its first Journalism Matters Award to HSToday editor David Silverberg. The award honors a B2B journalist whose particular coverage resulted in "tangible change within government or industry," the organization explained.

The finalists for the Magazine of the Year awards include American Medical News, CFO, Computerworld, Fortune Small Business, Spectrum, Lawn & Landscape, Macworld, PC World, Professional Builder and R&I in the 80,000+ circulation category and Architect, Associations Now, Automotive News, Chain Leader, Control, Exhibitor, Health Leaders, Information Security, Oregon Business, and The Scientist in the under-80,000 circ category.

The ASBPE will also be honoring 36 publications with National Azbee Awards of Excellence and 139 regional Azbees at its conference July 15 through July 17 in Washington, D.C. -- the theme of which is "Thriving in a Challenging Economy and Evolving Digital Age." A full list of honorees can be found at the ASBPE's Web site.

Advertising may not be enough to keep the magazine industry alive anymore, but that doesn't mean that there isn't still great work being done.

Yesterday, the Magazine Publishers of America celebrated outstanding work in magazine advertising with the announcement of the winners of its Kelly Awards. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco won the top prize -- the Grand Prize Kelly -- for its "There Can Only Be One" ads developed for the National Basketball Association. The ads, which promoted basketball games on ESPN, ABC and TNT, helped increase television ratings by 61 percent, the MPA said.

The agency also snagged the second place Gold Kelly for its work with ice cream maker Haagen Dazs and its "Haagen Dazs Loves Honey Bees" magazine ad campaign. The third place Silver Kelly went to Energy BBDO's Canadian Club campaign, "Damn Right Your Dad Drank It."

This was also the first year in the 28-year history of the Kelly Awards that the MPA allowed consumers to vote on their favorite ads. The results provided a list of "America's Favorite Magazine Ads," with BBDO NY's "Hands" campaign for AT&T taking the top spot.

A full list of winners is after the jump

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Today's Mirror Awards luncheon at the Harmonie Club uptown was swarmed by all manner of media types. Media critics who were nominated for Mirrors like Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff, Rachel Sklar of Abrams Research (nominated twice for her work for the Huffington Post) and The New York Times' David Carr (who won for best commentary in traditional media) mingled with colleagues and big name presenters, including Howard Dean and Nora Ephron.

The awards, which honor excellence in media reporting, were presented for the third year by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. MSNBC anchor and Newhouse alum Contessa Brewer guided the festivities as emcee, and Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, and Bloomberg political columnist Margaret Carlson presented awards.

Vanity Fair and The New York Times both took home two of the six prizes awarded by a jury of journalists and journalism educators. In addition to Carr, the Times' David Barstow won for best in-depth piece in traditional media. VF's Seth Mnookin and David Kamp each snagged an award for best single article, for traditional and digital media, respectively.

Rounding out the winners were Ian Parker for best profile, traditional media, for his profile of Times columnist Thomas Freidman for the New Yorker and Clive Thompson for Wired.com took home the award for best commentary in digital media.

Read on for more about our chat with Arianna Huffington (above middle, with her daughter Christina and MSNBC president Phil Griffin)

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Last night in New York City, the Foundation of American Women in Radio & Television presented their 34th annual Gracie Awards honoring the top women making entertainment for women.

The night's biggest winners were Amy Poehler, who took home the 2009 Dove Real Beauty Award, Tribute Award winner Rachael Ray and MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath, who was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award. And the red carpet was graced by more media celebrities who won or presented awards throughout the evening, including Suze Orman, Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric, Ann Curry, Bob Schieffer, New York Housewives Jill Zarin, Kelly Bensimon, LuAnn de Lesseps and Alex McCord, Oprah's BFF Gayle King and Maya Angelou.

Photo: Host Niecy Nash, reality star Ruby Gettinger, Kathy Griffin, Orman and Ray. Courtesy Larry Busacca/Wireimage. Check out some photos from inside the Gracies here and here.

Read on to find out who we talked to inside the Marriott Marquis ballroom

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Advertising Age's Simon Dumenco expressed his distaste for the Mirror Awards and Arianna Huffington earlier this week, but we think he would have a hard time finding fault in this new journalism award.

Starting in July, the Sidney Hillman Foundation will present "The Sidney," an award honoring socially-conscious journalism, every month. The winner, which can be a magazine, newspaper, Web site, photo essay or any broadcast outlet, will win $500 and "a bottle of union-made wine," the foundation said. Nominations can be submitted through the foundation's Web site.

Meanwhile, the debate about Huffington's legitimacy as the recipient of this year's Fred Dressler Lifetime Achievement Award at the Mirror Awards luncheon next week continues. Yesterday, Richard Prince interviewed Lorraine Branham, dean of the Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, which presents the Mirror Awards, who stood by the school's decision to honor Huffington.

"I spent 25 years in the newspaper business and I certainly believe journalists should be paid for their work," Branham said, according to Prince's online column Journal-isms. "But I am also a realist who can plainly see what is happening to the profession I know and love. It has changed and will continue to do so, and at a frightening pace...The old revenue model is in shambles and I don't think we can lay the blame for this at the doorstep of the Huffington Post."