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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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Some of those who showed to fete Stelter and co.: Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, NBC News president Steve Capus, Joe Scarborough, MSNBC anchors Contessa Brewer (ED NOTE: Brewer has yet to visit Dan Abrams‘ party house in the Hamptons) and Amy Robach, Rita Cosby, Gil “Stanley Bing” Schwartz, CBS’ Jeff Greenfield, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and business correspondent Ali Velshi, MSNBC producer Tammy Haddad, NY1′s Pat Kiernan, former CBS honcho Andrew Heyward, BusinessWeek columnist (and husband to our multimillionaire boss) Jon Fine, Jeff Jarvis, CNN anchor John Roberts, Page Six‘s Corynne Steindler, well-rested Observer columnist Michael Calderone, CNBC senior VP Jonathan Wald, Inside Edition‘s Sarah Rubenstein, Radar‘s Jeff Bercovici, HuffPo’s Rachel Sklar (whose date for the evening was 19-year-old CBS News intern Eric Kuhn), Broadcasting & Cable‘s Max Robins and Caroline Palmer (who, Robins says, is leaving B&C to become Vogue‘s Web editor), CNBC VP Josh Howard, Good Day New York host Ron Corning, Freud Communications’ Lisa Dallos, Marketwatch’s Jon Friedman and the omnipresent Julia Allison, who said she had been up since 5:00AM talking about Lindsay Lohan. Her take: “She should just kill herself already, before she kills someone else.”

Notable no-shows: Abrams, Katie, Charlie, Greta Van Susteren, Jon Stewart and Stelter supporter and former CNNer Aaron Brown.

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