The L.A. Weekly's Gene Maddaus was named Print Journalist of the Year at last night's L.A. Press Club's banquet, while a half-dozen Weekly staffers took first-place honors in other categories.

Of Maddaus' work, the judges wrote, “Maddaus' investigative stories were thorough and interesting. He knows how to write a story that peels the layers away one by one until the reader can't wait to see the ugly corruption fully exposed. His story about the Los Angeles County Assessor's Office was especially good. His entry was clearly the best in this category.”

Among the other victors were Zachary Pincus-Roth for Entertainment News/Feature, for his story about two mind-blowing magicians, Catherine Wagley for Entertainment Reviews/Criticism, and Darrick Rainey for Design.

Maddaus also took first place for Hard News for his story about a con man trying to buy the Dodgers, and Libby Molyneaux took first place for Headline Writing. You can read all the judges' comments here.

Gendy Alimurung took second place in News Feature and third place in Business. Former Weekly fellow Tessa Stuart took second place in the Business category, while Tibby Rothman won the third-place prize for Personality Profile. Simone Wilson placed third in Investigative Series for her work uncovering the city's hit-and-run epidemic.

The Weekly's arts blog, Public Spectacle, took third place in the blog category.

Our sister paper, the OC Weekly, took first place in the Business, Sports and Personality Profile categories.

In other big categories, Ryan Vaillancourt of the Los Angeles Downtown News was named Print Journalist of the Year for newspapers with a circulation under 50,000. Rick Loomis of the L.A. Times won Photojournalist of the Year. Martin Henderson of Patch.com was named Online Journalist of the Year, while NBC4's Robert Kovacik was Television Journalist of the Year and Warren Olney of KCRW was Radio Journalist of the Year.

The 55th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards were unveiled last night at the Millenium Biltmore Hotel.

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