Generally, newspapers don't glory in their deeds unless the recognition comes from someone else. That's a good thing.
Big institutions can forget that modesty is a virtue.
But a few years back, a flight of fancy hatched by this newspaper grew into a grand tradition for Southern California, and gave thousands of us reason to cheer our community. It was the autumn of 1995. The idea seemed incongruous to me, and for all the obvious reasons. No place in America is so packaged in stereotypes as Los Angeles. We hear them, we repeat them.