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This editorial director is beaming with pride.
The Pleasanton Weekly earned 14 California Journalism Awards over the weekend, including first place in our division in the Audience/Community Engagement Award, Editorial Comment and Print Front Page Layout & Design categories.
Factoring in our seven runner-up placements, our dedicated team received a remarkable 10 Top-2 awards for stellar and impactful community journalism during 2024 – by far the highest combined total for first- and second-place honors in the annual California News Publishers Association contest during my tenure here.
These results are a testament to the hard work, talent and output of our small editorial staff focused on hyper-local coverage of the entire Tri-Valley in the Weekly as well as our sister websites DanvilleSanRamon.com and LivermoreVine.com.
The variety and depth of our brand of nonprofit journalism truly shines through in our list of CJA winners.
Promoting and preserving that approach to local news was the central theme of our project that won us the Audience/Community Engagement Award for the first time ever.
Led by publisher Gina Channell Wilcox, supported by our editorial management and in partnership with the Three Valleys Community Foundation, we held a screening and panel discussion at the Firehouse Arts Center on Sept. 6 around the documentary “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink” by filmmaker Rick Goldsmith.
As I wrote in our CJA submission packet describing the free community event, “The powerful film shines a spotlight on the efforts of Alden Global Capital and other so-called vulture investing firms to buy up distressed newspaper groups across the country (like the Bay Area News Group locally), downsize staff and products as much as possible and squeeze as much revenue out of remaining assets such as real estate holdings – with little to no care about the impact on the journalism or its journalists.”
The post-screening panel moderated by Wilcox featured Goldsmith, then-State Sen. Steve Glazer and our blogger Tim Hunt, a career journalist. We raised important awareness and funding to support our local journalism efforts.
In the wake of the event, Wilcox also wrote an attention-grabbing commentary, “The state of local media: How we got here and what we could lose” – which earned first place in Editorial Comment in the CNPA competition.
“A free press is part of the foundation of our democracy,” she wrote near the end. “Our Founding Fathers envisioned a strong, free press to keep tabs on the branches of government, which is why the media is referred to as the ‘fourth estate’. They knew that an informed citizenry is key to a thriving democracy, and a strong, independent media is key to an informed citizenry.”
Our page designer Doug Young won our third top award, Print Front Page Layout & Design for his 2024 covers “Empty plates” (March 29), “Hitting its collaborative stride” (July 12) and “Year in Review” (Dec. 20).
Young cleaned up, earning six awards for his design work for us and our sister papers on the Peninsula, including second place in Print Inside Page Layout & Design for his spread for our Taste Tri-Valley Restaurant Week cover story. He took first place in that category too, for a design in The Almanac.
Our reporter Christian Trujano received three second-place awards: News Photo for his courtroom picture of convicted murderer Joseph Roberts at his sentencing in the infamous dismemberment case, Local Coverage of Election 2024 for his series “Sunol: A small town divided” and Labor Reporting for “Workplace bullying at Orkin”.
I earned three second-place awards too: Columns for my “What a Week” pair of personal obituaries for former colleague Dolores Fox Ciardelli and my family’s beloved cat Biscuits, Film and TV Writing/Reporting for my column “Feeling ‘Stuck'” and Best Newsletter for our monthly member-exclusive Local Scoop e-newsletter.
CNPA judges also awarded Trujano with fourth place in Coverage of Business and the Economy for “Costco is here … finally” and fifth place in Profile Story for “Schools’ unsung heroes”.
Trujano was the lead recipient, with me contributing, for the fifth-place series “Measure PP: Paying for Pleasanton’s budget woes” in Coverage of Local Government.
And the team of myself, Wilcox, Trujano and reporters Jeanita Lyman and Jude Strzemp shared the fourth-place award in Public Service Journalism for our Tri-Valley candidate forum series. So much work went into putting on those seven candidate forum events — beyond just the presentations in the room those nights, but hours of prep beforehand and coverage afterward each time.
A special shoutout to my wife and my son for their understanding and support on those long nights or early mornings (amid full regular workdays) alongside weekend prep days, and to our mothers for their help with child care logistics during forum season. I could not have done my part in moderating without you.
My pride overflowed as I sat in the Hilton LA Universal City ballroom on Saturday night representing our Embarcadero Media Foundation at the CNPA gala and cheered as the Pleasanton Weekly awards and those of our Peninsula Division peers were announced. The Palo Alto Weekly claimed seven first-place honors!
The awards are not why we do this job, but they are indicative of what we can do. Our journalists work with steadfast commitment to bring you the local community coverage you want and need day in and day out.
This is a crucial point in time for the news industry in general and our organization specifically. Visit our websites to learn more about how to support us. Every bit matters – reading our stories, subscribing to our emails, getting the paper delivered, patronizing businesses that advertise, attending our events, sharing our articles on social media, becoming a paid member, donating to our nonprofit …
We won’t be able to continue doing our great journalism without you.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
