The Tucson Weekly was named the non-daily Newspaper of the Year in the Arizona Newspapers Association’s annual Better Newspapers Contest.
The Sierra Vista Herald—which, like the Weekly, is owned by Wick Communications—won Newspaper of the Year honors in the daily-newspaper category. Newspaper of the Year awards are determined via a points system, combining honors won in the Excellence in Advertising Contest (announced earlier this year) and winning entries from the Better Newspapers Contest.
The Better Newspaper Contest results were announced today, Saturday, Oct. 15, during the ANA’s annual convention in Scottsdale. The contest period was May 1, 2010 through April 30, 2011. Judging was done by the New York Press Association.
The Weekly dominated the individual writing categories in its circulation category (non-dailies with a circulation of more than 10,000), and won several newspaper-wide honors as well.
Beyond the Newspaper of the Year honor, the Weekly’s biggest award came in the Community Service/Journalistic Achievement category, for the coverage of the mass shooting on Jan. 8, 2011, that left six dead, and 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wounded.
The 11 other awards earned by the Weekly:
• First place for Best Sustained Coverage or Series: Jim Nintzel, for his Congressional District 8 election coverage.
• First place for Investigative Reporting: Leo W. Banks, for “Smugglers’ Paradise” (Nov. 25, 2010), and his subsequent coverage of the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Terry was killed in the line of duty in the Peck Canyon Corridor three weeks after Banks’ Nov. 25 piece warned of increasing dangers there.
• First place for Best Sports Story: Tom Danehy, for “Rez Ball” (March 3, 2011).
• First place for Best Column, Analysis or Commentary: Renée Downing, for “We Can Learn a Lot From Our Animals About How to Accept the Passage of Time” (April 28, 2011).
• Second place for Best Special Section: Best of Tucson® (Sept. 23, 2010).
• Second place for Best Column, Analysis or Commentary: Tom Danehy, for “Tom’s Modest Proposal for a Rewrite of the DREAM Act Bill” (Feb. 24, 2011).
• Second place for Best Column, Feature or Criticism: Stephen Seigel, for “Albums in Your Stocking” (Dec. 16, 2010).
• Second place for Best Multimedia Storytelling: Josh Morgan, for “Last Days of the UMC Memorial” (The Range, Feb. 7, 2011).
• Third place for Page-Design Excellence.
• Third place for Investigative Reporting: Tim Vanderpool, for “Your Tax Dollars at Work” (Nov. 18, 2010).
• Third place for Best News Feature Story: Mari Herreras, for “Honoring Chelsie” (May 6, 2010).
Randy Hoeft of the Yuma Sun, and Dave Brown of San Pedro Valley News-Sun and Arizona Range News (which are fellow Wick publications) were named the ANA 2011 Photographers of the Year. Brady McCombs of the Arizona Daily Star, and Shanna Hogan of Scottsdale Times were named the ANA 2011 Journalists of the Year. Dan Shearer of the Green Valley News-Sun (yet another Wick publication) and a team from the Star won Story of the Year honors.
This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2011.
Fine, do to the junk they publish, my yahoo home page will be discontinued. I don’t like the TW crapy headlines on my yahoo homepage.
Then why are all the news headlines on the Yahoo home page garbage? The only decent reporter there is Leo Banks, his articles are never on the Yahoo home page. What a joke, reminds me of when Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, 2 weeks after being elected at which point he had done nothing. Just another liberal of the year award.
The headlines Yahoo pulls are from the blog. You’re certainly entitled to your opinion on whether the blog headlines are “garbage”, but just so you understand the process.
Not that I have a particular interest in the Nobel Peace Prize, but just for your information, Obama’s award was announced on October 9, 2009, 262 days after entering office, or about 37 1/2 weeks after he entered office.
But, hey, I’m still pretty excited to be part of the “liberal of the year” awards. Not quite the Nobel prize, but it’s still something, right?
Congrats TW. I am a bitter Christian clinging to my God and guns, but I find time to crawl out of the basement and watching for illegals to hunt to read your online rag. You make money on stuff that a clearly tiny minority of Arizonians agree with. That takes mad skills or a rabid devotion by an unbalanced following. You got me, so I prove the point. I would love for you to have just 1 dissenting voice from the La (klan with a tan) Raza line, but we can’t have everything, now can we?
Correction Dan Gibson, the deadline for nominations is February 1, meaning Obama would’ve been nominated after being in office for just 11 days. Sorry, I gave him credit for at least 14 days in office. My bad.
Touché, cmill. I have to admit that I don’t have a lot invested in the Nobel prizes, even though I won one in 1998 in the swimsuit competition.
Still, I can assure you that the staff of the Weekly worked really hard for this award. You can make whatever random comparison you like if that warms your conservative heart, but I’m still going to feel like my co-workers earned this award.
Congratulationf for an honor well deserved. You are somewhat more liberal than I, but I suppose the people who award these prizes are also more liberal than I. Congratulations to Dan, Jimmy, etc., even though I may disagree with you politically.
I came across this page by mistake. Interesting. I rather be conservative. I will die conservative. It seems to me that someone else owns your brain. Wow! how sad!