This one comes from creative director Dirk Barnett (who you may know from our ‘also-rans’ galleries), announcing to the staff that Newsweek won a number of photography awards.

Scott and I are very pleased to announce that Newsweek came away with a whopping 15 awards from the very prestigious annual American Photography competition. Out of over 8,100 international entries, only 324 are chosen, so it’s wonderful news that we made such an impression this year! Congrats to everyone at Newsweek, Newsweek International, and all of the amazing photographers for such impressive work.

Here is the winning list of photographers and the subjects they photographed:

• Chris Buck: Portrait of Michele Bachmann (ed: yes, that portrait of Michele Bachmann)
• Q. Sakamaki: Snow blankets area destroyed by tsunami
• Donald Weber: Tsunami coverage (2 photos)
• Balazs Gardi: Afghan soldier wears a plastic bag on his head during a dust storm.
• Andrew Hetherington: Portrait of Celine Dion 
• Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello: Portrait of Angelina Jolie (two photos)
• Alex Majoli: Refugees along the Libyan/Tunisian border (two photos)
• Andrew McConnell: Surfing in Gaza (two photos)
• Tim Hetherington: Libya coverage (two photos)
• Michael Zumstein: Gbagbo falls in Ivory Coast.

Tim Hetherington, as fate would have it, was later killed by Gaddafi forces’ “indiscriminate shelling,” per his last tweet, while covering the conflict in Libya. It’s quite bittersweet to see some of his final work would turn out to be award-winning, but heartwarming nonetheless.

Big congrats to all, and a thank you from your colleagues in the nwktumblr bat cave for keeping photojournalism alive and well. We’ll post some of the winning photographs on the tumblr in a jiffy.