Last week, the L.A. Press Club announced the finalists for its annual awards. Streetsblog Los Angeles appears as a finalist in five categories, including Best Blog, Best Online Journalist, and Best Audio Journalist.
Our sister site Santa Monica Next is also a finalist and our SGV reporter Chris Greenspon’s SGV Weekly podcast is a finalist in two other categories.
The Best Blog award has been handed out eight times previously, and it has ping-ponged back and forth between Streetsblog L.A. (four wins) and one of the blogs at Variety (the other four years). This year is no different, as Streetsblog and Variety are holding all of the finalist spots.
For the second year in a row, Joe Linton is a finalist for the Best Online Journalist award. He’s also up for an individual award for his September 28 story, "Where Metro and Caltrans Are Widening the 405 Freeway." This exhaustively researched piece demonstrates how Metro skirts environmental laws by breaking up large freeway projects into smaller projects that just happen to connect.
Also up for a “best of” award is Chris Greenspon for “Best Audio Journalist.” While the SGV Connect Podcast, co-hosted by Greenspon and Damien Newton, is part of the “Best Blog” submission, Chris is also up for individual awards in two categories for the SGV Weekly podcast. “Could Veteran Raver DJ Spiñorita Get the Key to Alhambra?” is a finalist for Best Personality Profile and “Could Teens Design a Better El Monte City Seal?” in the Documentary category.
Sahra Sulaiman and Damien Newton are both up for Best Political Commentary, Local, in the online category. After Councilmember Kevin de León made an appearance on CNN and gaslit the city by once again claiming his profoundly racist comments had been taken out of context, Sulaiman decided to revisit that context. "How Do You Solve a Problem Like KDL?” underscores just how deep KDL's resentments toward the Black community run while also exposing how de León used vulnerable Latino elders and immigrants as human shields to facilitate his return to council after he was censured.
At Santa Monica Next, Newton reports on one of the many silly distractions that are part of Santa Monica’s local elections. In “Early Halloween as New PAC Dresses Up as SMRR,” a political action committee attempts to confuse voters with flashy and expensive mailers by spoofing the name of the existing local political party, Santa Monicans for Renters Rights.
Which finalists place in the top three or win awards will be announced at the L.A. Press Club’s June 25 Awards Dinner.
