Times Receives Group’s Top Award for 5th Straight Year

For the fifth consecutive year, the Los Angeles Times on Saturday received the California Newspaper Publishers Assn.’s top award for general excellence among the state’s largest daily newspapers.

The Times also collected five other first place awards in the largest circulation category. Staff writers Mark Arax and Mark Gladstone were honored with first place in investigative/enterprise reporting for their stories on brutality in California’s prison system.

Reporters in The Times’ Washington bureau won first place in the non-local spot news category for their coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, while Times business reporters took first place in the business/financial story category for their coverage of the global economic crisis.

Photographer Alan Hagman’s picture of El Nino-driven waves crashing into a Ventura County home took first place in the spot news photo category. The Times also won first place in illustration/info graphic for a graphic on the new Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, drawn by artists Paul Carbo and David Puckett.

Also honored were community newspapers affiliated with The Times, including the Costa Mesa Pilot, the Huntington Beach Independent, Our Times Santa Monica, the Foothills Leaders and the Glendale News-Press, which won the most prizes with 13, including the general excellence award for papers with circulation under 10,000.

Other winners of the general excellence award in smaller circulation categories were the Daily Breeze of Torrance, the Santa Barbara News-Press and the Whittier Daily News.