SYRACUSE -- The winners for this year's Syracuse Press Club awards have been announced. On the radio side, public broadcasters led the pack. In TV, it's a neck-and-neck race between WSYR-TV and WSTM-TV. And we're also very happy to report CNYRadio.com appears on the award list as well.
The Syracuse Press Club sent out an email to local media a short time ago -- at 9:55pm -- announcing the fact that the winners list has been posted on the club's website. The list released tonight does not say which winners got first place or second place in their categories -- rather, the rankings will be revealed at the club's awards dinner in May.
Contest Coordinator Mike McAndrew told entrants, "we had about 250 entries in the contest this year, so picking winners was not easy." To ensure an unbiased selection process, entries were shipped out-of-market and judged by volunteers from the Florida Press Club, Cleveland Press Club, Milwaukee Press Club, Los Angeles Press Club, Houston Press Club, Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, and the San Diego Press Club.
Among the radio categories, WRVO clearly has the most mentions on the list, with a total of ten awards. In fact, the Oswego-based public broadcaster claims a sweep in three categories: Spot News, Investigative and Special Program. Syracuse University's WAER has five awards in the "regular" Radio categories, and three more awards in the "College" categories. 
Clear Channel's FM Newsradio 106.9 and 570 WSYR picked up one award, as did Classic FM (WCNY-FM). Although the competition is open to media outlets throughout a very wide area, all of the radio winners are stations within the Syracuse market.
In television, we can't say how many awards each station has won -- but we can tell you how many nominations each station has received. That's because there are still just two awards per category, but the TV list includes as many as four nominees for many of the categories.
It's a dead heat between ABC affiliate NewsChannel 9 (WSYR-TV) and the CNYCentral team that produces newscasts for NBC affiliate WSTM, CBS affiliate WTVH and CW6 (WSTW-LP). 
The channel 9 call letters appear on the list ten times (plus one for a college entry which aired on subchannel 9.2), while the combined total for WSTM and CNYCentral totals 9. Time Warner Cable's YNN also makes a respectable showing with 7 nominations. Syracuse PBS affiliate WCNY-TV is nominated for two documentaries it produced in 2010.
Beyond the Syracuse market, Elmira/Corning ABC affiliate WENY-TV picks up two nominations. Utica NBC affiliate WKTV is nominated for one TV award, and for "Best News Website" among the Internet awards.
Your editor is also very happy to announce this very website is listed to win an award for "Public Service" among the Internet categories. Admittedly, I wasn't expecting to actually win -- and considering the other winner is Crouse Hospital's website, a really slick website that was no doubt created by professional web designers and maintained by a full-time media relations team -- I'm pretty sure I'll be taking home the silver.
But that's still quite an exciting honor, and it's all thanks to you, the readers, the news tipsters, the commenters -- everyone who visits this site, "likes" it on Facebook, follows on Twitter. Your continued interest in reading helps fuel my continued interest in tracking down and reporting on the latest in local broadcasting.