Awards

Ken Armstrong accepts the John Chancellor Award

"The only way I can get into Columbia is to be asked to speak," joked NBC News correspondent Tom Brokaw as he kicked off the ceremony for the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism at Columbia's Low Library last night.

Brokaw spoke about the award's namesake, his former colleague John Chancellor, as well as the night's award recipient, Ken Armstrong, an investigative journalist at The Seattle Times.

Columbia Journalism School Dean Nicholas Lemann also introduced a number of people who had worked with Armstrong over the years, including Seattle Times executive editor David Boardman and the publisher of Armstrong's college paper, Pat Kuhnle. They all spoke highly of Armstrong, about his important investigative works including a series on the death penalty in Illinois while he was working for The Chicago Tribune.

"I am truly flattered," Armstrong said, upon accepting the award. "The work I do isn't always dramatic."

Tom Brokaw

Even as the media industry is seeming falling apart all around us, the industry still insists on honoring its members. There's no better time than the present to look on the bright side, we suppose.

This morning, min announced the winners of its first Editorial & Design Awards, awarding prizes in 27 different editorial and design categories. The award breakfast also celebrated the induction of several notable magazine industry movers and shakers into min's Hall of Fame, including keynote speaker Jackie Leo, formerly of Reader's Digest, Ladies' Home Journal's Sally Lee, Ellen Levine of Hearst, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia chief creative officer Gael Towey and John Rasmus of National Geographic Adventure, as well as Vogue editrix Anna Wintour and former Variety editor Peter Bart.

Other top winners of the day included Food Network Magazine's win for Best Launch and Fortune, which nabbed the Best Feature award for its "Three Days that Shook the World" piece on the economic collapse of last fall. BusinessWeek won for Best Investigative & News Coverage for its cover story on subprime mortgages (and snagged a prize for best use of social media), while epicurean pub Saveur was honored for best design for a single issue for its Dining in America issue.

Entertainment Weekly, which recently cut staffers as part of Time Inc.'s budget slashing, took home a number of awards including best photojournalism for its special Photo Issue, the best blog award for its PopWatch blog, best online column for Ken Tucker's "Watching TV" column and the top profile or Q&A prize for a feature story on Cheeta the chimp's life after Hollywood. Self magazine, a Conde Nast title also recently plagued by staff cuts, took home two prizes.

See a full list of the winners here.

min Announces Editorial & Design Award Winners --min Online

Last month we posted some of the finalists for the Bastiat Prize for Journalism, awarded by London think tank The International Policy Network. This year was notable in that, for the first time, the award included a category for online journalists.

Earlier this week, the prize went to Georgetown professor John Hasnas for his Wall Street Journal op-ed "The 'Unseen' Deserve Empathy, Too." The editorial questioned Barack Obama's appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court based on her reputation as empathetic and understanding, which Hasnas argued was antithetical to the qualities that make a good judge.

Second place was awarded to Robert Guest, Washington correspondent for The Economist, and third went to Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic.

Full press release after the jump

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Three staffers from The Denver Post have taken top honors in Editor & Publisher's Photo of the Year contest.

E&P announced last night that the Post's Craig F. Walker, Meghan Lyden and Tim Rasmussen had been awarded the top prize in the competition for their multimedia entry "Ian Fisher: American Soldier," which followed Fisher's journey as a soldier -- from recruitment, induction, training, deployment to Iraq, and return from combat -- over the course of 27 months.

There are also 24 other winners in six categories, including new categories like Portraits and Video/Multimedia as well as Unpublished Photo on Assignment and People's Choice awardees.

A full list of winners after the jump

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Magazine Publishers of America president Nina Link today announced changes in the magazine industry's Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Two industry awards, the Henry Johnson Fisher Award honoring "individuals who have made significant and longstanding contributions to the magazine publishing industry and society," and the American Society of Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame Award will now be presented at separate events. The Henry Johnson Fisher Awards will be presented at the American Magazine Conference, to be held next year in Chicago, while the Hall of Fame Award will be presented at next April's National Magazine Awards, where it was first presented.

The New York Times also reported this morning that ASME is adding 12 more categories to its National Magazine Awards, covering online media. The online awards will be presented in March.

Full release from the MPA after the jump

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A photojournalist and an investigative reporter are among the 24 MacArthur Fellows awarded $500,000 in "no strings attached" funding over the next five years.

Earlier today, the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced its 2009 fellows -- a list that includes photographer Lynsey Addario and Jerry Mitchell, a reporter at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss.

Addario, a photojournalist based in Istanbul, was chosen by the MacArhtur Foundation for her coverage of and focus on places in the midst of unrest, such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Darfur:

"A regular theme in Addario's work is capturing the lives of women in male-dominated societies. Her most recent project involves photographing survivors of gender-based violence in the Congo and is part of a traveling exhibition intended to increase awareness of the ongoing human rights abuses taking place there. Addario's dedication to demystifying foreign cultures and exposing the tragic consequences of human conflict is drawing much-needed attention to conflict zones around the world and providing a valuable historical record for future generations."

You can see more of Addario's work here.

Mitchell was recognized by the MacArthur Foundation for his work uncovering documents and evidence about Civil Rights era murders including the 1963 assassination of NAACP leader Medger Evers and the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala. church that killed four girls. Mitchell's work has led to new trials and convictions for previously unpunished criminals. Added the foundation:

"His investment of time and painstakingly detailed research has also produced a broad range of reports on such subjects as racial reconciliation in the South and judicial bribes and chicanery in Mississippi, as well as a series on his own family's battle against a rare genetic ailment. In an era when long-term investigative reporting is more the exception than the rule, Mitchell's life and work serve as an example of how a journalist willing to take risks and unsettle waters can make a difference in the pursuit of justice."

Other winners of the prestigious "genius grant" include mixed media artist Mark Bradford; novelist Edwidge Danticat; Deborah Eisenberg, a short story writer; filmmaker James Longley; and poet Heather McHugh.

After the jump, watch a video of Mitchell talking about his work and what it means to win a MacArthur Fellowship.

(Photos courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

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Even before the Primetime Emmys opened with a musical number by Neil Patrick Harris, the show's host -- who also served as co-producer -- was a lamenting the death of network television.

"This may very well be the last year they're on a network show," Harris told New York magazine in a a profile featured in last week's issue. "This wheel contract they have, where each year a different network gets the show, as the ratings decline it becomes less of a good thing to 'get it.' It's a very expensive show. Which means they have to get more ad revenue. Ads are less expensive, because ratings are down. So you have to do more ads, which makes the show smaller...and finally someone will do it on cable, where there won't be any commercials. Which will be a wonderful show. Our three-hour show is only two hours and five minutes long, due to economics."

If cable is a better outlet for award shows, is it also a better outlet for award-winning television? It seemed that way as a slew of the first few awards of the night went to basic cable shows -- Toni Collette won Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on Showtime's "United States of Tara," Glenn Close took home the Best Actress in a Drama Series award for "Damages" on FX, Bryan Cranston won Best Actor in a Drama Series for the second year in a row for his role in AMC's "Breaking Bad" and AMC's "Mad Men" won the drama writing award and Outstanding Drama Series.

But, the networks still had a strong showing. Kristin Chenoweth took home the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series prize for her role in ABC's "Pushing Daises," which was canceled even before nominations were announced. Jon Cryer took home Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy for CBS's "Two and a Half Men," Alec Baldwin won for the second year in a row for Best Actor in a Comedy Series for NBC's "30 Rock," which also took home the Outstanding Comedy Series award for the third year running.

Still, the changing world of television as a medium was a prevailing theme throughout the show. At one point, Harris revisited his online persona, Dr. Horrible, to (literally) sing the praises of Internet television over network and cable TV -- complete with "buffering" gag.

And in her acceptance speech, "30 Rock" creator and star Tina Fey took a jab at Jay Leno when she thanked NBC brass for not pulling her show off the air, "even though we are so much more expensive than a talk show."

Even Harris couldn't help mentioning network TV again in his sign off, telling viewers, "May we see you again on broadcast television again next year."

After the jump, some Emmy highlights, including the Harris' Dr. Horrible Sing-a-Long Blog bit.

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The Sidney Hillman Foundation has announced the winners for its third monthly Sidney Award for Social Justice Journalism.

Ryan Gabrielson and Michelle Reese of The East Valley Tribune in Phoenix, Ariz. have picked up the $500 prize this month for their 10,000 word series on the widespread abuse of a tax credit intended to widen access to private education in Arizona.

The two reporters found, among many, many other things, that abuse of the tax credit system has cost the state $350 million so far and the state's ability to deliver public services has been impacted.

In April, Gabrielson won different award for his work at the Tribune: the Pulitzer prize, which he shared with colleague Paul Giblin, who had been downsized by the paper before the honor was announced.

The Tribune's financial struggles were not lost of Hillman Foundation judge Charles Kaiser. "Although the newspaper has significantly shrunk its staff, it is heartening that the Tribune remains willing to devote so much time and so much space to such an important story," Kaiser noted in yesterday's award announcement.

Earlier: Matt Taibbi's Goldman Sachs Article Wins Socially Conscious Prize

(Photos via the Sidney Foundation)

--by Greg Wasserstrom

The International Policy Network is a think tank based in London whose mission is promote free market solutions to our social ailments. Since 2002, IPN has been doling out the Bastiat Prize for Journalism and they've just announced this year's finalists. And, for the first time this year, IPN had created a new category for online journalists.

The journalists up for the award this year all hail from print media, including Matthew Kaminski of The Wall Street Journal and The Economist's Robert Guest. There are three finalists up for the online award: Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation, for her Forbes.com column, Daniel Hannan, U.K. Member of European Parliament and Rohan Samarajiva, for columns written on LankaBusinessOnline.

The award itself is named after Frédéric Bastiat who was, for those of you in need a refresher on 19th century French politics, a philosopher who used satire to explain complex economic principles to the masses. Former winners include former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and economist Milton Friedman. PJ O'Rourke, the conservative humorist and Rolling Stone writer, will bring the star power to this year's awards dinner, which will take place on October 26 in New York.

Winners of the Bastiat Prize will receive $10,000 and winners on the online prize will get $3,000. Both winners will also be awarded a set of engraved crystal candlesticks, which is a reference to Bastiat's famous satirical political essay, "A Petition," IPN said.

A full list of the finalists after the jump

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For its second annual people's choice EWwy Awards, pop culture magazine Entertainment Weekly has partnered with online video Web site Hulu.com.

The EWwy's are EW's answers to television's Emmy Awards. They give readers a chance to honor their favorite shows and stars, including those perpetually snubbed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Starting today, readers can vote online for their faves through EW.com and Hulu. Explained the two:

"EW.com's EWwys programming will include galleries of photos for the ten categories with links back to Hulu's EWwys package, as well as a series of posts on the award-winning blog PopWatch with embedded video clips of the nominees. Hulu will feature a thematic 'carousel' of videos at www.hulu.com/ewwys2009 with links to vote and review all the nominees at EW.com."

Here's how it works: EW readers picked six nominees for each category for online visitors to pick from. For the next week, online visitors will be able to vote in the five comedy series categories (best series, best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress). Voting for the five drama series categories will start next Monday.

The winners will be announced on September 14, with recipients each earning a golden female sheep or "ewe" statuette.

"EW.com has received a hailstorm of emails and blog comments from fans who are outraged that their favorite shows haven't been recognized," EW.com's managing editor Cyndi Stivers said in a statment. "They say, 'How did the Emmys manage to ignore "True Blood"?' and 'What about "Battlestar Galactica"; what about "The Shield?" They had the most amazing final seasons!' We're delighted to join forces with Hulu so we can show as well as tell what our audience believes to be TV's best."

Read on for the full list of EWwy nominees

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