Truthdig Writer Named ‘Best Columnist’ at Southern California Journalism Awards

Truthdig is pleased to announce that our newsroom and freelance contributors won six Southern California Journalism Awards presented by the L.A. Press Club on Sunday night. 

Winning the night’s first-place trophy was Truthdig contributor Jim Knipfel, who topped the category of “Columnist, Current Events, Online,” for what the judges called Knipfel’s “Thoughtful and thought-provoking columns that penetrate beneath the surface with X-ray vision.”

With his signature wit and unique takes on culture, Knipfel regularly writes columns for Truthdig. His winning entries included “‘Unalived’ by a Thousand Cuts” to “How the Blind Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI.” 

Knipfel started writing as a columnist for a Philadelphia-based alternative weekly in 1987. He later moved to the New York Press, where he was the paper’s sole staff writer for more than a decade. His first book, “Slackjaw,” was a memoir about his youthful diagnosis with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that left him blind by the time he was 35. He has since written 14 more books, including the true-crime story about an ATM thief, “Noogie’s Time to Shine.” 

Truthdig contributor Siddhant Adlakha took home second place for his film criticism. Justin Nobel’s “Hell’s Kitchen: Radioactive Gas is Quietly Seeping into New York City” won second place for features and third place in investigative reporting. Madeleine Wattenbarger and Encarni Pindado won third place in the immigration reporting category for “Waiting in Limbo at Mexico’s Southern Border.” 

The Truthdig staff also won third place for best online news site.