2 People Paper journalists win coveted Pennsylvania press awards

PHOTOGRAPHER

David

Maialetti, one of two Daily News journalists to receive awards recently, has won the Paul Vathis Memorial Photography Portfolio Award of the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors. It carries a prize of $300.

The award recognizes one photographer across the state whose portfolio entry of spot news, feature and sports photography shows the "strong journalistic instinct, skills and dedication that were the hallmark of Paul Vathis' 56-year career as an AP photographer." Vathis died in 2002.

The honor was presented at the PAPME annual meeting, held this year in Gettysburg. Maialetti has been a Daily News photographer since 1998. Among his memorable assignments was coverage of the World Trade Center's destruction after the 9/11 attacks in New York.

The other awardee, John M. Baer, has been called Pennsylvania's "last angry man."

Baer, who has been writing a political column for the Daily News in his own penetrating and acerbic style since 2001, has been honored by his alma mater, Mount St. Mary's University, in Emmitsburg, Md.

Baer, who writes mostly about the doings - or lack of doings - of the Legislature, received the university's coveted 2009 Simon Brute Award, the highest honor conferred on an alumnus by the school's National Alumni Association.

The award, presented in a ceremony at the reunion banquet Friday in Emmitsburg, was given to Baer for "his distinguished devotion to his country, his commitment to his community and alma mater and his generous service to humanity." *

- John F. Morrison