The Los Angeles Press Club honored Truthdig’s work at its 61st annual Southern California Journalism Awards on Sunday. The news website, which received 12 nominations, placed second in the category for best website for a news organization exclusive to the internet and earned a first-place prize, another second-place award and four third-place prizes. Judging of over a thousand entries was done by press clubs from across the nation, and the Los Angeles Press Club announced it was their most competitive year yet.

Editor in Chief Robert Scheer and Publisher Zuade Kaufman attended the sold-out gala dinner where the winners were announced at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

First Place

In the Books/Art/Architecture/Design Review category, Truthdig’s Book Editor, Eunice Wong, won for “Demonic Possession in a Chinese Family,” a thoughtful review of Lindsay Wong’s “The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family.”

Wong wrote:

Many people are deeply damaged by their childhoods, even those with kind and affectionate parents. And then there’s Lindsay Wong. Diagnosed with an incurable brain disorder in her early 20s, she writes, “Of course, [the neurologist] had no idea that the childhood I had survived in my neighborhood of meth labs and pot grow-ops, and—the most dangerous of all—my crazy parents, made this look like a cakewalk.”

Wong (no relation to me, though, full disclosure, I did narrate the Audible audiobook of “The Woo-Woo”) grew up in a family with severe mental illness and a predisposition for outrageous cruelty. Her family did not trust Western medicine, choosing instead to believe that the hallucinations, delusions, suicide attempts and abuse caused by conditions like serious paranoid schizophrenia were the result of “demonic possession.”

Judges’ comment: This review explores the essence of the book without giving away too many details.

Second Place

In the category for website for a news organization exclusive to the internet, Scheer and Kaufman were recognized for the publication’s journalistic work and high publishing standards.

In the Photo Essay News/News Feature category, photojournalist Michael Nigro was recognized for “The Border in Black and White,” captured during a December trip to the U.S.-Mexico border throughout which he documented the growing border crisis in several powerful essays.

Third Place

In the Columnist category, Maj. Danny Sjursen, who writes policy commentary for Truthdig as well as the American History for Truthdiggers series, was recognized.

In the Consumer News or Feature category, Ellen Brown was recognized for her thorough column presaging the possible downfall of American financial institutions, “Banks Are Becoming Obsolete in China—Could the U.S. Be Next?”

In the Editorial Cartoon category, Mr. Fish was recognized once more for his consistently artful and perceptive Truthdig cartoons.

In the Foreign Correspondent Columnist or Critic category, Truthdig’s Foreign Editor, Natasha Hakimi Zapata, was recognized for her piece on the United Kingdom’s ill-fated divorce from the European Union, “Conservatives Own the Ongoing Disaster That Is Brexit.”

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