Times Wins 52 Awards From L.A. Press Club

Los Angeles Times’ staffers picked up 52 Greater Los Angeles Press Club awards, including an award for general excellence and the top investigative prize, at the club’s 40th annual awards ceremony Saturday night.

Among the paper’s prizes were 29 first place awards. The Times also won 23 awards of excellence at the ceremony, held at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Times television critic Howard Rosenberg was awarded the Joseph M. Quinn Memorial Award for career achievement. Jose Rios, vice president for news of KTTV-TV, Channel 11, won the Presidents Award for journalistic excellence.

Rosenberg and Kenneth Turan won awards for their television and film reviews.

The Times’ coverage of last year’s North Hollywood bank shootout took the general news award. Steve Berry and Jeff Brazil won the investigative reporting award for their series “Outgunned: The Holes in America’s Assault Weapons Laws.” In the same category, Ralph Frammolino took the award of excellence for “Harvest of Corneas at Morgue Questioned.”

Photographers Clarence Williams and David Bohrer tied for first place photo essay awards and Bohrer picked up a first place award for feature photography.

Writer James Ricci earned a first place feature reporting plaque for his series “After the Burn” and photographer Joel Lugavere won a first place award for his photos accompanying the series. News editor Dan Santos won for the layout of the “After the Burn” series.

Winners in column categories included former columnist Bill Boyarsky, now The Times’ city editor, and San Fernando Valley columnist Scott Harris.

Photographer Frank Weise took first place in general news photo and Irfan Khan won an award of excellence.

Columnist Sandy Banks won the personal/observational column category and reporter Sharon Bernstein took the award of excellence. Banks also won the award for a body of work in the personal/observational column category.

Among broadcast news organizations, KNX-AM radio garnered the most awards, with seven first place plaques and nine awards of excellence. Channel 11 won 10 first place plaques, the most for a television station.

The competition was judged by members of six other press clubs throughout the country.