Forgive the tooting of my own horn, but the Culture Vulture blog just won a major award - a first place for blog reporting from the Best of the West journalism contest, which covers newspapers big and small in 13 Western states.

Here's what the judge in the contest - Amanda St. Amand, continuous news editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch - said about the Vulture:

All five of Means' entries were top-of-the-line good - funny, informative, well-written, timely and made excellent use of the tools available online. For example, "American Idol" tryouts come around to a half-dozen or so big cities every year. After a while, how can you write the same story, or cover the same hopefuls? Easy, if you blog at the Culture Vulture. The "American Idol" entry was a great way to click through quickly, stop on the ones that interested you or skip the ones that didn't.

The same could be said for his blog entry on the Outdoor Retailers. Capturing "snapshots of the strangeness" was smart - it didn't make fun of the outdoor lovers but it did point out some of the more offbeat stuff you can find.

The other three entries - the political party involving the McCain drinking game, the sock monkey and "Dan Savage stands me up" - also were strong. Not a weak link among the five, and I have bookmarked this blog as one I plan to watch.

For a look at the competition, here are the blogs that came in second and third: The OC Weekly's "Navel Gazing" blog, and Larry Altman's crime blog in The Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif. Congratulations to both of them.

Labels: internet, journalism