BBC News, Al Jazeera take online journalism honors

The Los Angeles Times Business section was recognized with a general excellence award by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers at its annual convention in Dallas this weekend.

On January 7, long before Italy was in the spotlight of mainstream media, I wrote Italy The Invisible Elephant.It was five or six months before Italy became an uncloaked popular economic topic.However, "elephant hunting" is now a popular sport and mainstream media has done a better job at spotting the next one (with help of S&P threats to France's AAA rating of course).

Organisers of Australian country music's biggest awards night have been left red-faced by an embarrassing bungle in which a coveted "Golden Guitar" was presented to the wrong winner.The Country Music Association of Australia said it was "incredibly sorry" that a mix-up saw Lee Kernaghan handed the award for Album of the Year instead of the rightful winner, Graeme Connors.They said the wrong envelope was given to the host of Saturday's awards night, which marked the end of the 39th annual Tamworth Country Music Festival -- the nation's most famous celebration of the genre.

Organisers of Australian country music's biggest awards night have been left red-faced by an embarrassing bungle in which a coveted "Golden Guitar" was presented to the wrong winner.The Country Music Association of Australia said it was "incredibly sorry" that a mix-up saw Lee Kernaghan handed the award for Album of the Year instead of the rightful winner, Graeme Connors.They said the wrong envelope was given to the host of Saturday's awards night, which marked the end of the 39th annual Tamworth Country Music Festival -- the nation's most famous celebration of the genre.

US hip-hop band the Black Eyed Peas were mistakenly declared best international group at France's top music awards before the prize was given to the real winners, the German band Tokio Hotel.Choreographer Kamel Ouali, who was presenting the prizes late Saturday at the NRJ Awards in Cannes, told the audience the US band had won but a few minutes later returned to the stage to say he had made a mistake.Last year Katy Perry was mistakenly given the trophy for best international song when it should have gone to Rihanna.

He wasn't even nominated for an Oscar, but on Saturday night Ben Affleck received the top directing prize at the Director's Guild of America Awards (DGA) -- voted on by his fellow directors. 

Managing Editor Davan Maharaj will assume the top newsroom job. Stanton, 52, has led the news organization for four years, a period in which the paper won three Pulitzer Prizes, including the Public Service Award for exposing corruption in the city of Bell.Russ Stanton will step down as the editor and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Times on Dec.