Patrick Range McDonald Named Best Print Journalist of the Year by L.A. Press Club; LA Weekly Takes Home 6 More Awards

Patrick Range McDonald Named Best Print Journalist of the Year by L.A. Press Club; LA Weekly Takes Home 6 More Awards

By Simone Wilson Mon., Jun. 27 2011 at 9:10 AM

Patrick Range McDonald: awesome, officially.

Update: Oops. The Weekly raked in so much loot anoche that we forgot to mention our win for best personality profile: "A Tragic Love Story." (Congrats to freelancer Steve Friess on that one.) Also, this puts the Weekly one writing award above the Los Angeles Times. Not bad, eh?

In case you're wondering why the L.A. blogroll looks kind of groggy this morning: A couple hundred Los Angeles journalists took last night off, putting on their Sunday best for the Press Club Awards, a schmancy round of self-congratulations and free drinks. Highlights...

... of the five-hour auction/awards ceremony (yes, five hours; even the classiest Times flack could be spotted mid-slouch/yawn) included a journo-bashing routine by comedian Alonzo Bodden, an impossibly hard-crusted desert thingy and ~~six~~ seven -- count 'em, seven -- first-place awards for LA Weekly. Safe to say we cleaned the Millenium Biltmore Hotel of shiny gold placards last night. And, though only half the room was around to witness it, the top honor in L.A. print journalism was saved for last:

Lovable Weekly reporter Patrick Range McDonald was named journalist of the year, based on recommendations from press clubs in 12 other major U.S. cities.

Read the three cover stories that catapulted McDonald to greatness in 2010: "California's Parent Trigger," about a group of Compton parents trying to seize their kids' school from the floundering district, "Educating Maria," on Skid Row methods of illegal-immigrant schooling, and "City of Airheads," a story about underfunded L.A. libraries -- one that likely contributed to voters' March 2011 decision to force city government to reinvest.

McDonald's "Parent Trigger" also took home the first award of the night: best news feature. (Yes, it's that excellent. About time you read it.)

Also on the winning team was the versatile (and super sexy) Gendy Alimurung: She nabbed best sports story for "Manny Pacquiao: The Fight of His Life." Former music editor Gustavo Turner was next, taking away best entertainment column for a series of pieces that included "Roger Waters Paid Street Artists to Deface Elliot Smith Memorial Mural." (Or, as pronounced by the presenter, Goose-tuh-vo Turner. Really.)

Turner broke the news in May 2010 after spotting a suspicious Pink Floyd tag atop some of Sunset's most beloved street art. "Yup," he wrote. "Elliott Smith's moving memorial is now part of Waters' 'guerrilla' marketing campaign for expensive tickets to a nostalgia gig aimed at wealthy Boomers." Brilliant. And the judges agreed.

L.A.'s fave alt weekly was showered in kudos for its smooth transition into the digital age, as well: The LA Weekly Facebook page won for, uh, best Facebook page, and food editor Amy Scattergood won best blog for Squid Ink.

Annoyingly, we will now have no choice but to use "award-winning journalist" in front of all these slackers' names when talking smack about them in the cafeteria. But damn, do they deserve it.

[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]

Tags:

awards, best print journalist, Gendy Alimurung, Gustavo Turner, L.A. Press Cub, Parent Trigger, Patrick Range McDonald

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Sheila Lightfoot, WeHo

A big, well deserved congratulations to Patrick. So glad hispeers recognized the excellence of his work the way we readers already had.While not mentioned here, his articles on West Hollywood politics woke up a lotof residents and, I believe, played a role in record voter turnout for our citycouncil election in March. Patrick pulled back the curtain and enlightened thecitizens. In a world of 30-second sound bites, competing talking heads andshort blips of information, we depend more than ever on good, seriousjournalists who dig deep and tell us things we need to know. Thank you,Patrick.

muckraker

From one raker of muck to another, congratulations Patrick. His story "California's Parent Trigger" was a superb piece on how difficult it is for Californians to affect change in the schools educating their children and the roadblocks school bureaucracies throw in front of those parents. Kudos to parents for tilting at windmills and for Patrick's reporting on their rage against the machine.