LA Weekly Founders Win Sinclair Award
The Liberty Hill Foundation will present its seventh annual Upton Sinclair award to the founders of LA Weekly.
Joie Davidow, Jay Levin, Ginger Varney and Michael Ventura, journalists who started the weekly newspaper a decade ago, will be honored June 21 at a dinner at the Beverly Hilton hotel.
The Liberty Hill Foundation is a charitable organization based in Santa Monica that gives seed-money grants to community and social action groups.
The foundation is named for the spot near the harbor in San Pedro where muckraker and social activist Upton Sinclair was arrested in 1923 after reading the U.S. Constitution aloud to striking longshoremen.
The annual Upton Sinclair award dinner is the foundation’s principal fund-raising event. Past recipients of the award include performers Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Harry Belafonte and Edward James Olmos and director Martin Ritt.
Foundation Director Michele Prichard said LA Weekly was being honored for its coverage of the environment and other issues of social concern, and for taking an active role in the community. Jim Becker, head of the foundation board, praised the paper for being more than a compendium of advertisements and coming events and “really going out on a limb to make a statement.”
Tickets for the event are $175.
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