When New York Times columnist David Carr won for Best Commentary over the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz and New York's Kurt Andersen, Carr didn't overlook the fact that Andersen had been his boss at Inside.com: "Six years ago, I arrived by turnip truck to New York and you plucked me off of it," he said, by way of thanks. (Andersen had already returned the favor in the same column space that had earned him his own Mirror nomination, calling Carr a "quirky, entertaining, singular writer" in February). Carr also thanked Times business editor Lawrence Ingrassia (who had brought along his recent hire, 21-year-old ex-TVNewser.com blogger Brian Stelter) for "pushing my hire through before the masthead [editors] knew what he was doing."

Outside of that category, New York magazine didn't break its recent awards-winning streak, taking the awards for Best Single Article with Clive Thompson's "Blogs to Riches," and for Best Profile with Philip Weiss' "A Guy Named Craig." (Thompson was nominated twice in the same category, including for a New York Times Magazine story on Google and China). A tribute video for Variety editor in chief Peter Bart's lifetime achievement award featured Hollywood power players such as Harvey Weinstein, Sherri Lansing and Danny DeVito lavishly praising him, with the occasional carefully placed gripe. (Brian Grazer: "I remember reading a review [of his film in Variety] that was so bad that I got a cold sore while reading it.") Andreas Kluth of the Economist won for Best Subject-Related Series, HealthNewsReview.org beat out Mediabistro.com for Excellence in Media Information Services, and Dean Miller took home the award for Best Coverage of Breaking Industry News for a piece in Nieman Reports. — Irin Carmon

WORD TO THE WISE: Hearst Magazines president Cathie Black is dishing out the wisdom in supersize portions, given her upcoming book, "Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life)," and the convocation speech she will give this Saturday to graduates of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Black, who is from Chicago but attended Trinity College in Connecticut, has already gotten a few tips from Medill faculty on crafting her remarks. For one, keep them brief, but perhaps not as short as media mogul Ted Turner's commencement speech at Ithaca College when Black received an honorary degree there. "He came up to the podium and took out [a piece of paper that was] nothing bigger than a matchbox, and he said: ‘Here's my message: take time to smell the roses, love what you do and love your life.' It couldn't have been more than 90 seconds," she recalled.