The National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association yesterday announced the winners of its Excellence in Journalism Awards. Among the winners are many past GLAAD Media Awards honorees, like 2011 Journalist of the Year LZ Granderson of ESPN and CNN.

Granderson's work—whether about sports, race, gender, sexual orientation, or a combination of them all—succeeds at being topical and profound, often spurring water cooler (and social media) conversation. His willingness to talk about the intersection of race and sexual orientation makes him a unique voice in the national conversation.

Granderson won a 2009 GLAAD Media Award for online journalism.  The Sarah Pettit LGBT Journalist of the Year was author Michael Luongo, author of the book Gay Travels in the Muslim World.

His collective work for publications including The Advocate , Gay City News , Out and the Gay and Lesbian Review focused primarily on gay life in the Middle East . While Luongo's work is broadly viewed as travel writing, his portraits of the gay Middle East defy boundaries and provide readers with a glimpse of gay life in a region few LGBT people visit.

Also honored by the NLGJA was the CNN project “Gary and Tony Have a Baby”, Chris Geidner from DC's MetroWeekly for his story  Body of Work on Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal, blogger Bil Browning for his Bilerico Project piece “A Christmas Miracle for Betsie Gallardo” and The Family author Jeff Sharlet for his Harpers feature , “Straight Man's Burden”.  Also of note, the award for Excellence in Opinion Writing  went to Jonathan Rauch from The Advocate for “The Majority Report” and the NLGJA award for Excellence in Multimedia Journalism went to TheBody.com which we highlighted just a few weeks ago here. Go to NLGJA's website for a full list of winners and finishers, and congratulations to all!