We're at the start of journalism awards season, and our colleagues in Philadelphia have reported our first big wins of the year. For starters, The Legal Intelligencer has won the John V. R. Bull Freedom of Information Award for Shannon Duffy’s articles and editor-in-chief Hank Grezlak's columns on the 3rd Circuit’s practice of having secret dockets…a practice they stopped as a result of The Legal's coverage. According to Hank, "What’s cool about the FOI award is that, unlike most of the awards, it is not broken down by division and is a competition against every newspaper in the state. Most of the specialty awards went to the Philly or Pittsburgh papers. We’ve never won a specialty award in the Keystone Press Awards before." Wow!

In addition, senior staff reporter Gina Passarella has won first place for Series Reporting for her business of law series, “Rainmakers & Rainchasers.” Again from Hank: "It’s a great honor for (Gina) and for The Legal. The Keystone awards are tough for us to win, in large part because our stuff is sophisticated and there is a heavy bias toward general circulation papers for these. Having said that, this is a big category and it’s impressive that Gina won for her business of law coverage."

Meanwhile, The Legal Intelligencer's sister publication, The Pennsylvania Law Weekly, picked up two awards. Editor Peter Hall and Reporter Leo Strupczewski were awarded first place for General News for their story on the conviction of Judge Joyce, and Peter received a first place award as editor for a niche publication.

According to Hank, this is more total awards for our Philadelphia newsroom colleagues than we have ever received in the past. Congratulations for the awards, but also for the terrific work which lies behind all this recognition.