SPJ announced the winners of its annual “Excellence in Journalism” competition on Friday night. Congratulations to all the journalists who took home awards that night.

The big winner was the Honolulu Advertiser, the newspaper that was dismantled to create the new Honolulu Star-Advertiser, which was boosted by William Cole’s “Bad Blood: The Ambush of Chosen Company in Afghanistan”, which took top honors in seven categories.

I suppose its good news that many of the former Honolulu Advertiser staffers who won awards this year are among those now at the Star-Advertiser, including Cole, Andrew Gomes, Mary Vorsino, Dave Shapiro, Rob Perez, and Mike Gordon.

In the “Open Print” category, where publications of all sizes and types compete head-to-head, Honolulu’s daily newspapers were aced out in major categories. The top award for government reporting went to Nancy Cook Lauer of West Hawaii Today. The sports reporting category was topped by Don Chapman of Midweek. Best editorial went to Pat Tummons of Environment Hawaii. Top in news photography was William Ing of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

The dailies took their share of awards but, overall, now face a very competitive environment.

Diane Ako and Tracy Arakaki won first place in feature reporting for television, and another piece by Ako was a finalist in the same category. Both Ako and Arakaki were among those laid off following the three-way merger of KHNL, KGMB, and KFVE, as was Leland Kim, who took SPJ’s top honors for public service reporting for television.

I think SPJ needs to rethink its categories for online journalism, which currently reflect the old model of mainstream newspaper or television stories repackaged for their web sites. The categories don’t reflect the diversity or growing importance of online journalism independent of MSM.