Good News

Two Houston Press reporters have recently received word they are winners in separate journalism contests.

Brian Wallstin is a winner in the Texas Medical Association's Anson Jones M.D. Award, which honors excellence in health communication. Wallstin won for his story "A Question of Life," which told how administrators at Texas Women's Hospital ignored a couple's request to "let nature take its course" and resuscitated an extremely premature newborn with serious mental and physical defects.

Richard Connelly is a winner in the Texas Gavel Awards competition sponsored by the State Bar of Texas. Connelly won for "How to Beat City Hall," an account of how city of Houston attorneys handled a suit filed against the city for its police officers' actions in the Barbra Piotrowski case. A jury found that the Houston Police Department had received a tip that Piotrowski's former lover, health-spa tycoon Richard Minns, was looking to hire someone to murder her. Officers did nothing to warn her -- in fact, two of the officers involved were moonlighting for a close associate of Minns's -- and five weeks later, a bungled slaying attempt left Piotrowski, now 44, in a wheelchair for life. Minns has never been charged in the case and now lives in Europe.