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The Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists says it will honor five local journalists and an attorney at its 37th annual awards banquet next spring. This year's winners are:
- Marty Sauerzopf, city editor at City News Service;
- Dan Evans, editor for the Los Angeles Times community newspapers;
- Andy Ludlum, director of news programming at KNX 1070 Newsradio and KFWB News Talk 980;
- Beverly White, general assignment reporter at NBC4;
- Jean-Paul Jassy, attorney and counsel for SPJ/LA, will receive the chapter’s Freedom of Information Award;
- Sharon Waxman, chief executive officer and editor-in-chief of TheWrap.com, gets the chapter’s Distinguished Work in New Media Award. That's the one that the chapter gave me for LA Observed in 2009.
No time or place yet for the banquet. Here's the long form info on the winners from SPJ.
Television
Beverly White is a veteran general assignment reporter for the “Channel 4 News.” She joined NBC4 in 1992 from WTVJ, the NBC owned and operated station in Miami. White specializes in live television and has covered a variety of stories for NBC4 including the destructive El Nino weather system, the recurrent Southern California wildfires, local flooding, mudslides and the Northridge earthquake. In addition, she has traveled for NBC4 on select stories such as the 2004 hurricane swarm in Florida and Alabama. Locally, she has been a steady presence on the top-rated 11p.m. "Channel 4 News" for more than a decade. She holds a broadcast journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Throughout her career, White has shared her time and talent, giving speeches and presentations to colleges, community and civic groups. A member of the National Association of Black Journalists, White is a past president of the local affiliate chapter, the Black Journalists Association of Southern California. She has been a Scholar in Residence at Citrus College in Glendora and an adjunct professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Southern California.Radio
Andy Ludlum is Director of News Programming for CBS all-news KNX 1070 Newsradio and KFWB Asset Trust’s KFWB News Talk 980. He’s been with CBS Los Angeles for 15 years. Prior to joining CBS, Ludlum was program director at KABC/KMPC AM in Los Angeles. He started in radio in the ‘70s as a traffic reporter in San Jose, CA, and has been an editor, producer, news reporter and anchor. Most of his career has been in management roles for radio and TV stations, including in Seattle, Kansas City and Los Angeles. In Seattle, he was vice president of news operations for KIRO television station and two radio stations. Ludlum has covered some exceptional events from the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt to the economic emergence of China and the rebirth of democracy in the former Soviet Union. He has broadcast from Israel, Italy, Great Britain, Japan and Korea and covered the 1980 eruption of the Mt. St. Helens volcano. Ludlum’s stations are known for producing high quality, award-winning, community based programming. His own work has been recognized with a local Emmy, national Radio and Television News Directors Association awards, Golden Mikes, Associated Press awards and Religion in Media awards. Ludlum’s wife, Rodi, is an artist. They have two grown daughters, one grandson, and another grandchild due in May.
Print (circulation over 90,000)Marty Sauerzopf is on his second tour of journalism duty in Los Angeles, serving as city editor for City News Service. He started with CNS in 1989 as an entertainment stringer, then moved on to become a general assignment reporter before shifting to the civil courthouse and eventually Los Angeles City Hall. He covered the city during the police beating of Rodney King, the ensuing upheaval in the LAPD and Christopher Commission probe of the department -- a period that taught him the important lesson, "Always use a tape recorder when Daryl Gates is talking," a lesson that came in handy during later work in Arizona covering the election and tenure of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Sauerzopf worked in Arizona for more than 15 years at the Tribune newspapers and The Arizona Republic, covering government agencies across the Valley of the Sun, including the city of Phoenix and Maricopa County, along with regional transportation issues. He returned to City News Service in 2005, overseeing the regional wire service's reporting staff and coordinating news coverage across a four-county area.
Print (circulation under 90,000)Dan Evans, editor of the Los Angeles Times-produced community newspapers including the Glendale News-Press, Burbank Leader, La Cañada Valley Sun and Pasadena Sun, joined Times Community News in April 2009, and helped launch the Pasadena publication. In 2011, the Burbank Leader won a public records suit against the city of Burbank, ordering it to release information on bonus payments to city employees. This year, the Pasadena Sun (joining with the Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee) won a public records lawsuit against the state Assembly, seeking to force open details of members’ budgets. The Burbank Leader won the General Excellence award from the California Newspaper Publishers Association in 2011 -- the first time in decades a TCN paper has won the top honor. In 2012, the Pasadena Sun received an EPPY from Editor & Publisher, naming it the best weekly news website under one million monthly uniques.
Evans has won three CNPA awards for his columns and was runner-up for the LA Press Club's journalist of the year honors in 2011. Prior to TCN, Evans worked as the online news director for The Hollywood Reporter, and has worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Examiner and San Diego Union-Tribune. Evans has an M.S. from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and did his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of the adjunct faculty at USC Annenberg.
Distinguished Work in New MediaSharon Waxman is the CEO and editor-in-chief of TheWrap.com, which was founded in 2009 and covers the business of entertainment and media. Waxman is an award-winning journalist, a best-selling author and a former Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times. Before the Times, she was a correspondent for eight years for The Washington Post. She started out as a foreign correspondent, covering Europe and the Middle East for a decade. Waxman is also the author of two books, including the best-seller, "Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System." Her most recent book, "Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World," examined who ought to own the trophies of history. Waxman has won many awards for her work, including best online columnist in the National Entertainment Journalism awards in 2012. The Washington Post nominated her for the Pulitzer Prize in 1999, for her work covering the second Palestinian intifada, the year before she won the prestigious feature-writing award for Arts & Entertainment writing from the University of Missouri. Waxman attended Barnard College, Columbia University, where she studied English literature, then earned a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East Studies from St. Antony's College at Oxford University.
Freedom of Information AwardJean-Paul Jassy, SPJ/LA’s pro bono counsel, is a founding partner of Bostwick & Jassy LLP, a trial and appellate law firm focusing on the representation of media and entertainment companies and others with free press, free speech, freedom of information and copyright concerns. Jassy is listed in The Best Lawyers in America® in the fields of First Amendment Law and Litigation - First Amendment. He has served as an adjunct professor at UC Irvine’s law school, teaching a semester-long course on First Amendment law and another on media law. Jassy also has served as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Southern California Law School (teaching Constitutional Law II -- First Amendment law) and at Southwestern University Law School (teaching a course on the law of defamation, privacy and publicity). Jassy has also taught legal and ethical issues in journalism, a required course for a journalism certificate, at UCLA Extension. He has authored many articles on First Amendment, privacy and copyright issues. Jassy is on the Governing Board of the American Bar Association’s Forum on Communications Law, and he is the former co-chair of the California Chapter of the Media Law Resource Center.
