On the Scene at the Matrix Awards

Gather a thousand-plus female media professionals in a room and it's likely more than a few of them will be Hillary Clinton sympathizers. So it was no surprise at today's Matrix Awards luncheon when emcee Padma Lakshmi referenced "the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton" in her opening remarks, and then paused for applause.

The surprise was how little applause it elicited -- so little that several attendees remarked on it after the event. One who works in magazine publishing described the response as "tepid"; another, a TV executive, characterized it as "golf claps." Could it be a sign that Clinton's losing her base? Or did the Mark Penn debacle just have them feeling dejected?

The Matrix Awards are given out by New York Women in Communications. This year's recipients included Good Morning America's Robin Roberts, Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl, ABC TV president Anne Sweeney and Linda Greenhouse, the longtime New York Times Supreme Court correspondent who recently accepted a buyout.

Some highlights:

-Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. presented Greenhouse's award, and made a show of honoring his soon-to-be-ex-employee, bowing down and kissing her hand when she was first introduced. In her acceptance speech, Greenhouse reminisced about being a young news junkie: "I once paid twenty dollars for a week-old copy of the Sunday New York Times in San Jose, Costa Rica, and considered it a bargain."

-Restaurateur Wolfgang Puck showed that he hasn't been keeping up on recent media industry news while introducing Reichl. "Hopefully you'll come back to the Los Angeles Times. Since that guy from Chicago bought it, maybe it has more money now," he said. (Not so much, Wolf.)

-Reichl started off her rather dour speech by announcing that today would've been her mother's 100th birthday. "My mother was a wonderful example," she said. "She was everything I didn't want to be, and to this day I wake up every morning grateful not to be her."

-Roberts, accepting her award from GMA-mate Diane Sawyer, joked around: "We call ourselves 'Thelma and Louise' because sometimes we feel like we're in that convertible, about to go over the cliff."

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