Phoenix New Times and Tucson Weekly walked away with plenty of loot from the Arizona Press Club‘s annual journalism awards.

Phoenix New Times received fourteen first-place honors, and forty total awards on the night:

Michael Lacey, Monica Alonzo, and Stephen Lemons won first place in the Project, Explanatory Writing and Public Service Journalism category for the series examining the U.S. government’s failed immigration policy and what it has wrought.

“A deeply sourced series that tells the stories of what happens to Latino immigrants in America and those trying to come here,” the judges wrote. “The strength of this undertaking is its humanity – this is no retelling of events based on official records. These reporters are at the border, in Mexico, in the courtroom, in jail, in the health center, in people’s homes. These stories paint a picture that is compelling, heartbreaking, infuriating – and all too real.”

Other first-place winners from Phoenix New Times were Martin Cizmar, James King, Claire Lawton, Jonathan McNamara, Jamie Peachey, Malia Politzer, Paul Rubin, Peter Storch, John Walters and Kyle T. Webster.

Tucson Weekly picked up seven awards, six of those for first-place:

All of the [Tucson] Weekly‘s writing honors came in metro or “Best in Arizona” categories, meaning that the Weekly‘s entries competed against those submitted by all of the state’s largest newspapers.

Tim Vanderpool won two first-place trophies. His “Predators and Prey” (May 20, 2010) took top honors in the Public Safety Reporting category.

. . .

Vanderpool’s other win came in the Health Reporting category, for “Death by Study” (March 4, 2010), about a potential childhood leukemia cluster in Sierra Vista.

Tucson Weekly‘s other first-place winners were Emily Bowen, Tom Danehy, Renée Downing, Anna Mirocha, Linda Ray, Margaret Regan and David Zickl.