By FishbowlLA Staff
Catching up to the present: the first half of May was awards season for the people who cover everyone else.
LA journalism shows up on the 2026 Pulitzer list
The 2026 Pulitzer Prizes brought some Los Angeles recognition. LA Taco — the scrappy independent food, culture and news site — landed a finalist nod, with editorial cartoonist Ivan Ehlers named a finalist in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for work published in LA Taco and elsewhere. The Los Angeles Times’ Gustavo Arellano was a finalist in Commentary for a series of columns on the human consequences of federal budget cuts.
For LA Taco in particular — a site that has spent two decades proving a tiny independent outlet can do serious journalism — a Pulitzer finalist line is a genuine milestone, and a useful counterpoint to a year of contraction headlines.
Read more at The Pulitzer Prizes →
The LA Press Club names its 68th SoCal Journalism Awards finalists
The Los Angeles Press Club rolled out the finalists for the 68th Southern California Journalism Awards, drawn from more than 2,700 entries across the region. The club also named its marquee honorees for the year: Nobel laureate Maria Ressa will receive the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism; longtime LA broadcaster Rob Fukuzaki gets the Joseph M. Quinn Award for Lifetime Achievement; civil-rights attorney Carol Sobel takes the Guardian Award for her work defending press freedom; and Craig Melvin receives the President’s Award.
The winners will be announced June 28 at the Millennium Biltmore in downtown Los Angeles. In a year when — as this very roundup has tracked — LA journalists have been laid off, kettled at protests and squeezed by funding cuts, an awards season is also a head count: a reminder of how much the region’s press is still producing.
Read more at the Los Angeles Press Club →
That’s the roundup
The Week in LA Media is a FishbowlLA franchise — and with this edition the backfilled archive is caught up to the present. New issues run Fridays. Spot a newsroom move, a new hire, a launch or a quiet exit we should know about? The tip line is always open.