North County Times

SAN DIEGO -- The North County Times took home six first-place plaques and four second-place awards, as well as a pair of special regional honors, at an annual San Diego County journalism awards banquet Thursday night.

A special First Amendment Award was bestowed on writers Tom Pfingsten and Gary Warth for their continuous coverage of a Fallbrook High School newspaper censorship controversy between July and December 2008. The award honors the story or series of stories that best spotlights First Amendment issues around the region.

"Any time First Amendment issues get spotlighted, it is good for the whole community," said North County Times Editor Kent Davy.

Warth also was named recipient of the Herbert Lockwood "Woody" Award, for providing the year's best humorous writing in his columns, "Chihuahuas," "Buyout" and "Tax Form." The award is named after Lockwood, a longtime San Diego-area journalist, humorist and historian who died in February at the age of 91.

"In the midst of all the industry turmoil and the local pressure on this particular market, this staff is still producing astonishingly good journalism," Davy said. "I am very proud and grateful for all of the hard work that not only the award winners do, but that everyone on this staff does."

The awards were announced at the Society of Professional Journalists San Diego Pro Chapter's annual banquet at the Bali Hai on San Diego Bay.

A total of 557 entries were submitted for the contest that honors the best in broadcast, print and Web journalism in San Diego County.

"Even in the face of layoffs and budget cuts, we have a lot of truly great journalism to celebrate in San Diego," said Jodi Cleesattle, SPJ-San Diego Chapter president, in a statement.

The first-place award winners included reporter Sarah Gordon, who won in the non-deadline news category for a feature on how train engineers cope with the stress they encounter after people commit suicide by throwing themselves in front of their trains.

A judge said of the piece: "An amazing story that I've never seen before. Good examination of the emotional impact of a deadly trend."

Other first-place winners on the list were photographer Jamie Scott Lytle, for a sports photo titled, "Heartbreaker;" the newspaper staff for breaking news coverage of a Camp Pendleton fire; writers Zach Fox and Edward Sifuentes for a story about a Vista real estate agent who pushed people, mostly Latinos, into financial distress.

Fox also took home a first-place plaque in the political/government category for his story, "Donation preceded Horn's sprawling housing proposal."

Reporters Mark Walker and Teri Figueroa took a first in the legal story category for their series on state prison and parole problems.

Other winners:

- Sifuentes, honorable mention, investigative story, for a story on Escondido checkpoints and the revenue the city generated from them.

- Pam Kragen, second place, review/criticism, for "Media, myth-making the targets…"

- Irv Erdos, second place, column, for three columns.

- Dave Downey, second place, science/technology/health story, for a story about early warning earthquake systems.

- NCTimes.com, second place, Web site design.

- NCTimes.com, honorable mention, news Web site.