No joke: The Recorder's resident humor columnist, Justice William Bedsworth of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, brought home top honors at the California Journalism Awards earlier this month.

Bedsworth, who writes The Recorder's 'A Criminal Waste of Space' monthly column, was one of only eight winners in the California News Publishers Association's statewide 'Best of the Best' contest as part of the organization's annual awards which honor the best examples of journalism in California. This year marked the first time the organization picked the top winners among first-place finishers across divisions and circulation categories for the “Best of the Best.” Also among the top winners were entries from the Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Thousand Oaks Acorn, and the Taft Midway Driller.

The CNPA chose Bedsworth for the honor based on his columns “Voting Rights … and Wrongs,” which chronicled the dangers of putting democracy in the hands of the voters, and “ Symbols of Authority,” which mused on the utility of judicial robes and gavels.

“Having just gotten an award for writing, it's a little embarrassing to find that I cannot adequately express how much it means to me,” wrote Bedsworth after receiving news of the award. “It's hard to imagine it's going to get better than this.”

“For me, this is like being named to an all-star team or getting an Oscar. The people in this category were people I read and enjoy all the time. Having professional journalists decide that my stuff is comparable to theirs is pretty exciting,” the judge wrote.

The Recorder also brought home four other top-five finishes in the awards' Digital Contest.

San Francisco bureau chief Ross Todd took home a second place finish in the in-depth reporting category for coverage of legal developments in the cryptocurrency world. Reporter Caroline Spiezio and designer David Palmer picked up a fourth-place finish in the information graphics category for their timeline chronicling Uber's string of legal controversies this past year. Todd, Spiezio and colleague Ben Hancock were awarded fifth-place for in the breaking news category for coverage of the Waymo v. Uber litigation. And Litigation Daily's Jenna Greene placed fifth in the writing category for her column “Jeff Had Issues: An Akin Gump Lawyer Breaks Bad—and There's No Satisfying Explanation.”

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