Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott has been a member of the Los Angeles Times’ sports department since 1989. She was hired as a baseball writer and covered the Angels for three seasons before moving onto the Lakers’ beat for a season.

She covered the NHL and Olympic sports for more than a decade and in 2005 was voted the winner of the Elmer Ferguson Award, given annually by the Hockey Hall of Fame “in recognition of distinguished members of the newspaper profession whose words have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” She was the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport.

Elliott also won the Best Breaking News Story award from the Associated Press Sports Editors for her story on the labor agreement that ended the National Hockey League lockout in 2005. She became a general sports columnist in 2006.

Elliott, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She began her career at the Chicago Sun-Times and spent 10 years at Newsday before moving West.