Below are the Bay Area’s winners in the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ 13th annual Best in Business contest. SABEW will hand out the awards during a ceremony at its annual conference April 27 in Baltimore. Here is a link to the judges’ comments.

• The Santa Rosa Press Democrat — General Excellence, small papers (circulation under 125,000)

• Carol Benfell, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, “Hospital closure” — Business News Reporting, small publications

• Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News, “Harsh side of the boom” — Enterprise reporting, large publications

• Ron Leuty, San Francisco Business Times, “The fight of his life: Bay Area tech execs and VCs rally to aid one of their own battling a rare disease” — Enterprise reporting, weekly publications

• Steve Symanovich, San Francisco Business Times — Columns, weekly publications

• Tom Krazit, Caroline McCarthy, Erica Ogg, Kent German, Leslie Katz, Brian Cooley, CNET News, “Launch of the iPhone” — Online Excellence, Breaking News, large Web sites