Spring is journalism’s awards season, as our peers in professional organizations across the country look at our best work and see how it compares. So far, the Herald-Leader is doing pretty well.
Sports columnist John Clay placed second in the annual U.S. Basketball Writers Association contest, behind the Washington Post’s John Feinstein. The Society of American Business Editors and Writers chose two winners in the project reporting category (small papers) of its prestigious contest — and both of them were ours. SABEW’s award went to “Wrong Side of the Track,” by Janet Patton and “Win, Lose or Draw,” by Bill Estep and John Stamper, which looked at effectiveness and accountability in Kentucky’s economic development efforts. Earlier this year, "Wrong Side of the Track" won Patton her second Eclipse Award from the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.
We had three winners in the Associated Press Sports Editors competition. Sports columnist Mark Story placed second in the projects category,for his three-part narrative about Lexington minister Whit Chriswell’s fall and rise, and third in column writing among papers with circulation between 100,000 to 250,000. Janet Patton won an honorable mention in the investigative category for papers of all sizes for "Wrong Side of the Track." David Stephenson was named Sports Photographer of the Year for 2005 by the Kentucky News Photographers Association, which also named the Herald-Leader the Newspaper of the Year for the ninth out of the past 10 years. And we won two awards in the Society for News Design competition. The first was for special coverage of a single subject, in this case the Kentucky Derby. Section fronts and pages included in the entry were designed by Brian Simms, Dennis Varney, Randy Medema, Marilyn Cecil and former employees Jason Moon and Kenny Monteith. The second honor was for the Derby posters designed by Moon and Monteith depicting the new and improved Churchill Downs. The poster photograph was taken by Mark Cornelison.
Tom Eblen
Managing Editor
Kudos to all winners and editors!
These qualified articles, especially SABEW’s award-winning articles, make me proud of subscribing your papers to understand what/when/who/where/how/why things work so in multiple contexts and scales.
Keep up your excellent work.