St. Louis Beacon political reporter Jo Mannies accepted the John Michael McGuire Lifetime Achievement Award from United Media Guild on Jan. 25. Mannies was honored for more than 30 years of covering politics and policy in an intrepid, unbiased way.

McGuire, a longtime and beloved feature writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, died in 2009.

Also honored alongside Mannies was Christine Byers of the Post-Dispatch. She won the Terry Hughes Award, which is named in memory of the late Post-Dispatch columnist who wrote stories that were compassionate and revelatory. In her remarks, Byers cited Mannies as a role model. Byers also noted that a few years ago, when she was slated to be laid off as part of a downsizing, Mannies retired from the Post-Dispatch, thus saving her job.

Mannies said that Hughes, who died in 1991 at age 36 of breast cancer, had been a close friend. She said Hughes would have proud of Byers’ work, which included a series of stories about Anna Brown, a homeless woman who died in police custody.