Seventeen years.
That’s the last time I won an award with the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Better Newspaper Contests.
That was a shared award between me (the assistant news editor) and the news editor, friend Tina Hinz, of the Wartburg Trumpet for our headline writing.
There have been a few stories, series, columns or other items I thought would be worthy of honorable mention in my 17-years of journalism since then, including several clips I’m definitely proud of that didn’t get accolades, but I was up against tough competition those years, too.
When we received notification of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Better Newspaper Contest Awards that we had won in December, I was elated. My first full year as editor, and we won something in contests this year. Five of them, somewhere between first and third place in five different categories.
Some of them were happy surprises. Photography is not always my strong suit, and I’m my own worst critic on bad composition or out of focus action shots, so awards for sports and news photos were truly me doubting they were ones I had taken until I saw the photos in the winners portion of the INA website. I’m now an award winning photographer. Features pages was another. With all of the festivals and dedication to photos at those events, though, we always had a leg up against other communities because we had plenty of photo pages and spreads to highlight our communities.
Some of them, like the coverage of education, was a last minute me looking at the category and thinking “We have something in this category that shows more than just a cursory story from school board meetings,” about Lisbon’s search for a science teacher last school year.
The excellence in editorial writing award to me is the one that I’m most proud of. It’s something that we as a newspaper maintain weekly, long established before I was editor. There are weeks where the topics come clear to mind because of reporting or topics that I can come up with an opinion, and then there are the weeks where I scramble.
It’s an award that also carries on the collaborative work of others at this paper. For years, the Sun Editorials were collaborative. We’d all take a pass at a topic, and then Margaret and Jake would flow the best points on a topic into an editorial.
I still have that help, mostly from a copy editor who chops away some of my stray thoughts and helps keep my opinions more cogent.
It’s been a great year as editor, and I’m happy just to have one of those plaques again, let alone five of them. And the pressure is now on for the next 17 years.