All the winners

The list of LA Press Club winners is here (.pdf). The awards ceremony was held last night.

How they rocked Bell

Next Thursday, Aug. 26, Los Angeles Times reporters Ruben Vives and Jeff Gottleib will be guests of the LA Press Club to explain how they found the story on the outrageous salaries being paid to Bell's city council and top administrators. The group meets at the the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd., and the program starts at 7 p.m. Free for members, $15 for the rest of us.

Four in the morning

1. You might want to curb your sexting while at work, thanks to a unanimous ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. LAT

2. Get to know the semantic web - before it gets to know you. Nieman Journalism Lab

3. Faced with a lagging number of contributors, Wikipedia plans to change protocals for editing "sensitive" articles. NetworkWorld

4. The L.A. Press Club bets on celebrities. fishbowlLA

Night of the awards

The Los Angeles Press Club announced its awards last night. The full list of winners is here.

Four in the morning

1. The LA Press Club announced award finalists today. If you're the LA Weekly, KPCC or your name is Amy Alkon, chances are you're going to walk away with a plaque. Arianna Huffington of Huffington Post, Robyn Dixon of the Los Angeles Times and Rick Orlov of the Daily News will receive special awards. LAPC

2. Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Lakewood, had a baby. LAT

3. "No one manipulates the press like David Geffen," writes Mark Lacter at LA Biz Observed. *New York Post story calls talks between Geffen and the New York Times "guff".

4. Evan George of the Los Angeles Daily Journal dug through public records and found that a state program set up to reimburse patients who were wrongly dumped by their private health insurers has been largely ineffective. The story is behind a paywall, but here's an excerpt:

A year after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration unveiled a series of landmark legal settlements intended to relieve thousands of Californians who had their health insurance revoked, only a fraction of patients have taken part in the program, and just four are known to have received any kind of payment from their insurer, a Daily Journal investigation has found.

Overall, just 5 percent of patients wanted or were aware of the state's plan and took part in it, records show. Many of those who lost their insurance racked up crippling debt for medical costs when their policies were rescinded.

-snip-

A Department of Managed Health Care spokeswoman defended the program this month, saying it had won new health coverage for 177 Californians who otherwise would have stayed uninsured. "We were able to provide that for them in a quick way where they wouldn't have to go through a lengthy court battle," spokeswoman Lynne Randolph said.

Asked why medical bills have not been addressed, Randolph blamed the delay on private lawyers and the Los Angeles city attorney, whose ongoing lawsuits have interfered with the state's settlement notices.

A long night*

Newsrooms may be shrinking across Los Angeles, but the LA Press Club still managed to find three or so hours of material for its awards night on Saturday. A complete list of the winners is here.

A few standout moments from the night. Harry Shearer tried mightily to mine the beatification of Tim Russert for humor. Few in the audience responded. Shearer had better luck skewering Lee Abrams, Tribune innovation guru, for his exclamation-point speak, and Sam Zell, Tribune owner, for his fondness of the word fuck. Since I left my Mayhill Fowler-brand audio recorder at home, I can't offer a transcript, and paraphrasing jokes is a sure-fire loser, but through a wine-soaked memory I remember the Zell line had something to do with Zell using "fuck" more than 300 times in his latest memo, and that was just the first sentence.

The most amusing speech of the night came from Steve Lopez, who won the President's Award. He, too, took aim at Abrams and Zell, and at Shearer's suit. Lopez noted that Abrams came to visit the Times last week and was genuinely surprised to discover the paper had a bureau in Baghdad. Seriously. Lopez also recounted his trip to the beach to knock on Sam Zell's front door, which prompted a fuck you from Zell, and then promised to go back again.

The most moving defense of journalism of the night came from Daniel Pearl's father, Judea Pearl, in introducing the night's Pearl honoree, Bob Woodruff. In losing his son, Pearl said realized how elusive the truth can be and how dangerous the road sometimes is in trying to finding it.

On a more personal note, KCRW's Warren Olney won two awards, both for shows produced before I came here. The Los Angeles Daily Journal also took home a couple honors for work done in the Southern California office - I was up in the Capitol for them. Unfortunately, I didn't see a single nomination from the MediaNews newspapers in the San Gabriel Valley, despite some deserving work. I gather they didn't submit anything. Neither, it seems, did the Daily Breeze.

*Updated