Inland Valley Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen, Los Angeles Times photographer Irfan Khan, NBC4 reporter Toni Guinyard, KPCC reporter Josie Huang and USA Tuesday national correspondent Tami Abdollah were Tuesday named recipients of Distinguished Journalist awards from the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
The five, along with Freedom of Information award winner Nora Benavidez, PEN America’s director of U.S. Free Expression Programs, will be honored at the chapter’s 45th annual Distinguished Journalists Awards ceremony. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the date and location of this year’s awards ceremony are pending.
SPJ/LA presents the Distinguished Journalist awards “to members of the profession who have produced an impressive body of work and demonstrated a deep commitment to their craft.” The chapter has recognized reporters, editors and photographers in print and broadcast journalism for more than four decades.
In 2008, SPJ/LA added an award for new media, which was later renamed as the digital media category. In addition, the chapter gives the Freedom of Information award to a non-journalist who has helped promote First Amendment issues.
Allen, the honoree in the Print (under 90,000 circulation) category, has been a journalist for more than 30 years. He began his career in Sonoma County at a weekly and has been a fixture for 24 years at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, where he writes a column about local people, places, history, culture and government.
Khan, who’s been a Los Angeles Times staff photographer since 1996 after several years of freelancing for the paper, is the honoree in the Print (more than 90,000 circulation) category. Khan started his career as a commercial photographer in Pakistan in 1973 and moved to Dubai in 1977, where he worked for an advertising agency and at a leading English newspaper.
Khan’s assignments have included photographing the Hajj in Saudi Arabia and war zones of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for coverage of the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino. Recently, Khan has memorialized the COVID-19 pandemic, which included taking photos inside intensive care units and a crematorium.
Guinyard, the honoree in the Television category, joined NBC4 as a general assignment reporter in 2006 and can be seen on the daily morning news “Today in L.A.” from 4 to 7 a.m. and the 11 a.m. newscast. Over the course of her two-decade career, she has earned five Los Angeles Emmy Awards. Her feature “Empty Lots, Empty Promises,” highlighting the lack of redevelopment in South Los Angeles, won her recognition as a national finalist for the 2007 Harry Chapin Media Awards.
Huang, who covers Asian American communities and breaking news for 89.3 KPCC, Southern California Public Radio, started her career working in daily newspapers in Massachusetts and Maine. She switched to public radio in 2008 when she joined Maine Public Radio. She has been at KPCC since 2012.
Abdollah, who is being honored in the Digital Media category, covers the criminal justice system for USA Tuesday. Previously, the native Angeleno helped launch the tech and business journalism startup dot.LA, and before that served as a national security/cybersecurity reporter for The Associated Press in its Washington, D.C., bureau and as a law enforcement reporter in AP’s Los Angeles bureau.
Benavidez, a lawyer by training, guides PEN America’s national advocacy agenda on First Amendment and free expression issues. She works with writers, policymakers, PEN members and community advocates to defend press freedom, combat disinformation, support protest rights and fight back against forms of censorship that chill writers, artists and others.