Weekly News wins 13 awards at WNPA annual meeting

The La Conner Weekly News has the best newspaper photographers in the state. Five of the paper’s 13 certificates awarded by the judges of this year’s Better Newspaper Contest were in photography. The judges agree with Weekly News readers that the paper’s photos are superb: Nancy Crowell and Maralyn Powell swept the Group 1 Color Pictorial, Crowell winning first and second, and Don Coyote almost swept the General News Photo for a combined Groups 1 and 2 with a second and third award.

Cindy Vest’s lifelong career making newspapers succeed while behind the scenes was recognized with the 2019 WNPA Dixie Lee Bradley Award, an honor the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association gives annually that “recognizes newspaper staff members who work long and hard, often behind the scenes, to see that the best possible community newspaper is distributed each week. The award was given at the 132nd WNPA convention in Olympia last week. Vest was given a desktop clock and $500 at the Friday luncheon (details in “Musings,” page 2).

Vest shared a third place award with Ken Stern for Group 1 Front Page Design

In news writing, Judy Booth won first place for her profile on Henry Chamberlain recent return to Japan after being a World War II POW there. Bill Reynolds won third place for a feature sports story and shared third place with Stern for a short news story. Stern and Cindy Vest were recognized for a front page design and Stern won four news awards, including a second and third for theatre reviews.

The contest time period was for newspapers published from April 2018 through March 2019. Awards are presented in four groups according to their circulation. The Weekly News is in group 1 (circulation under 2,500). Judging this year was by members of the North Carolina Press Association.