Capital & Main Wins Seven First Place SoCal Journalism Awards Including Online Journalist of the Year

Capital & Main won 7 first-place prizes and 16 overall at the 64th annual Southern California Journalism Awards, one of the largest regional media contests in the nation. The ceremony, held June 25 at the Sheraton Universal Hotel, honored the best reporting of 2021.

Senior reporter Robin Urevich won the prestigious Online Journalist of the Year Award for her in-depth coverage of California’s affordable housing crisis. The judges observed, ”You can feel the shoe leather being worn down by the intense probing. Nothing less than a full 3 dimensions will do — along with a full accounting of who is winning and who is losing in California’s dysfunctional housing market…. Her work reads like a crusade against injustice.” Urevich also took first place in Investigative Reporting (online) for her story “L.A.’s Affordable Housing Programs Leave Low-Income Renters in the Dark.”

Investigative reporter Angelika Albaladejo received two first-place awards in the Activism Journalism (print/online) and Hard News (online) categories for her story “A Drunk Mechanic, Shackled Immigrants, a Crash Landing: The Dangers of ICE Flights.” The judges stated that her work is a “classic example of an investigative story that sheds light on a little-known problem.”

Contributing writer Jack Ross and Janette Villafana of L.A. Taco won first place in two categories — Business (online) and News Feature (online, music/culture/performing arts) — for “Cart Battle: Los Angeles’ Code War Against Street Vendors.” The judges note that their reporting “immerses readers in the latest chapter of a turf war between street vendors and L.A. public officials that stretches back more than a century.

Capital & Main also won a first-place prize in the General News (online) category for contributing writer David Bacon’s “Tulare County’s Homeless to Be Thrown Off Their Levee Sanctuary,” which the judges describe as a “phenomenal people-centric story rich with story arcs and data.”

In addition, Capital & Main won the following awards:

Second Place Awards

• Website, News Organization Exclusive to The Internet (Online) — Capital & Main staff

• Consumer News or Feature (all media platforms) — Robin Urevich for “The Gatekeepers”

• Photo Essay (art/photography on all platforms, single topic, culture/entertainment) — David Bacon for “California Farmworkers Still Tending Fields in 114-Degree Heat”

• Hard News (online) — Jack Ross for “Why Does USC Hire People Fired by the LAPD?”

• Culture News (online) — Janette Villafana and Jack Ross for “Cart Battle: Los Angeles’ Code War Against Street Vendors”

• General News (online) — Robin Urevich for “L.A.’s Affordable Housing Programs Leave Low-Income Renters in the Dark”
• Pandemic Reporting (online) — Dan Ross for “How Were Los Angeles Hospitals Brought to the Brink by COVID?”

Third Place Awards

• Consumer News or Feature (all media platforms) — Dan Ross, Steve Appleford and Sasha Abramsky for “Drought Nation”
• News Photo (art/photography on all platforms) — Ted Soqui for “Troy the Cat-Man”

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