Rob Owen did not come from western Pennsylvania. I didn't see any Seattle Times badges in the Rainbow Room. So that left me pretty much the sole attending representative among the non-East Coast-based nominees for the second annual Mirror Awards for media coverage, a worthy if thusfar hyper-regional celebration of the media professionals who are best at covering ... each other. Four of the five category winners and the overwhelming majority of nominees are based a stone's throw from the top of 30 Rockefeller Center, where these pictures were taken. (Mrs. TV Barn suggested they rename it the New York Mirror Awards. They could put a bust of Walter Winchell in the logo, though I guess then people would think the awards had something to do with classic movies. But in terms of New Yorkers covering New Yorkers, it'd be spot-on.)
Geography, by the way, had little to do with my not winning (complete list is here). I was proud of my piece, but I felt the prize in my category of Best Profile should go to David Folkenflik of NPR (recently relocated to NYC; he joked that a focus group had found that most of the media were located here). However, my second favorite was the winning profile, of the late Gerald Boyd, written by Jeff Coplon (yes, Kansas Citians, that same one who wrote for the KC Times back in the day).
Still, it was nice to meet and reacquaint with some of my friends in the trade I mostly know online, including the folks at Broadcasting & Cable, Rory O'Connor, Rachel Sklar (who owes me a picture she took of me and Rory), Emily Nussbaum, IWantMedia's Patrick Phillips and Boston's Dan Kennedy — who, like me, got travel money to come to New York for the honor of being nominated.
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