Daily Journal wins 13 press club awards

The Daily Journal was awarded third place for general excellence in the Daily Newspapers category. The San Jose Mercury News won first place in that category and Santa Rosa Press Democrat won second place.

Reporter Heather Murtagh won first place in the breaking news category for her story "Tragedy Averted” about the Hillsdale High School attempted bombing and first place in the Technology Story category for her story, "Tweeting, a business necessity.” Two stories from the Mercury News won second and third place in that category. Murtagh also won second place in the news story category for her story "Measure money in question.” The first place winner in that category was Jeff Mitchell of the Sacramento Bee for his story, "20 years later, opponents still battling the Oakland Airport Connector.” Shaun Bishop of the Daily News won third place in that category for his story, "Traveling on your dime.”

Sports editor Nathan Mollat won first place in the sports game story category for his story, "Champions at Last.” Second place in that category was "Giant Surprise” by Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News. Mollat won second place in the sports story category for his story, "Bielagus on track.” Mollat also won third place in the sports feature photography category and the sports action photography category.

Senior reporter and columnist Michelle Durand won first place in the news/political column category and columnist Sue Lempert won second place in the feature columns category.

Correspondent Cheri Lucas won second place in the entertainment review category for her book review, "The Ramen King and I.” Reporter Bill Silverfarb won two third place awards for his breaking news story, "Student shot, college cleared” and his series, "Policing in the 21st century.”

The San Francisco Peninsula Press Club gave out a total of 167 awards in 36 categories selected from 394 entries from media professionals in the 11 Greater Bay Area counties.

Entries were judged by the Bakersfield Press Club, Milwaukee Press Club, the Press Club of New Orleans and the Press Club of Southeast Texas. Print photography was judged by press photographers outside of the region and was coordinated by Paul Sakuma of the Associated Press.

The Press Club also granted four $1,500 scholarships in the name of the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen to Maritza Martin of Jefferson High School in Daly City and Anca Ulea of California High School in San Ramon.

The Collegiate scholarships were presented to Margaret Baum of the College of San Mateo and Richard Parks of the University of California, Berkeley.