By the Daily Post staff
The Daily Post has won 15 awards from the San Francisco Press Club including first-place honors for investigative reporting, news series, feature story, entertainment review and front page design.
The Press Club contest, now in its 42nd year, drew entries from newspapers, news websites and broadcasters from the nine-county Bay Area. The Post competed in the same division of the contest as the region’s large daily newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Mercury News.
The judging was by professional journalists in other parts of the United States.
Reporters Emily Mibach and Allison Levitsky, Theater Critic John Angell Grant and Editor Dave Price won awards for the Post.
Mibach’s story, “Last call for the Oasis,” about the closing of the beloved burger and pizza joint in Menlo Park, received first-place honors in the category of “feature story of a light nature.” Another story on the closing of the Oasis by Mibach won the top prize in the category of business story.
Levitsky, who earlier this year moved on to the San Jose Business Journal, won a first-place award for the Post in the category of “feature story of a serious nature.” The award was for her profile of murder victim Jose Jairo Ospina Jaramillo, a deaf, mute, visually impaired homeless man who was brutally attacked outside a theater in Mountain View.
Levitsky won a first-place award for investigative reporting for an Aug. 21, 2018, story about the Palo Alto Unified School District’s ham-handed attempt to keep the public from learning about a $150,000 legal settlement with a family who sued after the district revealed confidential medical information about a student.
Levitsky won the second-place award for investigative reporting for an exclusive story about Palo Alto officials holding private meetings with the buyers of the Hotel President. After buying the hotel, which was actually an apartment house, the new owners evicted the 75 tenants and asked the city to convert the building into a hotel, which would generate more money. The city has rejected that request. The Post’s ongoing coverage of the Hotel President controversy earned the paper a second-place award for news series or continuing coverage.
The Post also won the first-place award in that category for its continuing coverage of a retired Redwood City police officer’s 17-1/2 hour standoff with police and the legal proceedings thereafter. In the end, McGee got probation for the standoff.
The Post also won awards for:
• political column — Dave Price’s column on Mondays;
• entertainment reviews — theater reviews by John Angell Grant, which won first- and second-place awards;
• front page design;
• and continuing coverage for the story of Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford.
Editor Price swept the headline-writing category, winning the first-, second- and third-place awards. The winning headlines were “Volkswagen decides to squash the Bug,” “Superintendent’s race thisclose” (with no space between “this” and “close”) and “City’s soda tax loses its fizz.”
The Press Club announced the awards at a dinner in Burlingame on Thursday night.
Kudos! These awards are incredibly well deserved. The PA Daily Post is truly what a newspaper is supposed to be.