PDI story edges out New York Times in US journalism awards

Leonardo DiCaprio

Ruben Nepales, the LA-based former columnist of Inquirer, happily informed us last weekend that the article he wrote for Inquirer Entertainment dated July 28, 2019, about Leonardo DiCaprio—titled “DiCaprio’s fading star character inspires his talk on how fickle fame is”—won second place in the Celebrity Feature, TV/Film-related category of the Los Angeles Press Club’s National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards.

Ruben V. Nepales

Elated

First place went to a piece about Robert De Niro and Al Pacino by Brent Lang of Variety, while third place went to the feature about Renée Zellweger by Kyle Buchanan of the New York Times.

“I am elated that someone like me, who grew up in Calasiao, a small town in Pangasinan, and representing a paper in the Philippines, won over a giant newspaper like the New York Times,” Ruben said in his e-mail to Inquirer Entertainment.

His second-place finish at the LA Press Club wasn’t the only good news Ruben had for us.

The US-based journalist’s acclaimed latest book “Through a Writer’s Lens,” for which we wrote a foreword, is now out as a handier 8.5×10 paperbound on Amazon (amzn.to/3ri5K9S). Follow the link, dear readers—it’s worth every collectors’ while.