| Gail Staley, owner and publisher of the Davis County Clipper hands presentation honors over to the UPA’s newest member Sun Advocate publisher Richard Shaw. |
With two championships in four years under their belts, the Sun Advocate staff submitted materials to the Utah Press Association from last year’s issues in hopes that the paper would once again score enough points to win the “General Excellence” award at the Better Newspaper Contest that is held each year by the Utah Press Association.
Those submissions, once again, turned the trick, as for the third time in five years the paper won the award and along the way picked up first place honors in a number of categories.
“We have a great staff who all work very hard, are creative and are dedicated,” said Richard Shaw, the Sun Advocate publisher after the awards ceremony. “There are a lot of good papers in our category and I feel we are fortunate to walk away with this award again.”
The awards are presented each year at the association’s general conference. This year’s gathering was held in St. George, and was heavily attended by newspapers throughout the state. During the conference attendees go to workshops and connect with other newspaper people.
“It’s a good conference and anyone who goes can learn a lot from those who do presentations,” said Shaw. “I was particularly impressed with Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff’s and Salt Lake Tribune owner Dean Singleton’s address’ this year.”
In the contest there are 19 categories in which papers can submit their materials. Almost all the papers in the state participate. Entries are submitted to one of four classes of newspapers, with three of those classes based on the circulation numbers the particular paper has. The classes that exist are weekly and twice-weekly papers that have a circulation between 0-2,500 (category one), those that are between 2,500-6,000 (category two), and those that have more than 6,000 (category three). Category four includes all the daily papers in the state. The Sun Advocate qualifies to be in category two.
The Sun Advocate won the following awards.
•General excellence award: The conferring of this award is based on the number of first place, second place and third place finishes a newspaper achieves in each of the 19 categories.
•First place: Best classified pages with Sheri Davies and Lynda Barnett taking the point on that entry.
•First place: Best in-house produced ad for Desert Thunder ad series by James Bailey and Jenni Fasselin.
| Sun Advocate community editor receives an award during the Utah Press Associations Saturday night banquet at the Dixie Center in St. George. |
•First place: Best run of press ad campaign for Styles to Dye For by Kelly Wilkinson and Jenni Fasselin.
•First place: Best use of ad color for Warehouse Direct Furniture by Kelly Wilkinson and Christa Kaminski.
•First place: Best circulation promotion for Sutherlands and Sun Advocate team up to help Childrens Justice Center by Kelly Wilkinson and Richard Shaw.
•First place: Best editors columns (Eat your vegetables before they eat you, Grave mistakes are often not that bad and a Box for everything, everything in a box) by Richard Shaw.
•First place: Best breaking news story “Rescue, MSHA teams battle mountain to locate miners” by Richard Shaw.
•First place: Best local news coverage overall throughout the year.
•First place: Best photo page by Charles McManus and Jason Bailey.
•Second place: Best news photograph by Patsy Stoddard that appeared on the front page of the April 24, 2007 edition.
•Second place: Best feature column (Spud’s 10 ways to save gas. Learning from little people and Spud’s bear survival tactics) by Tom McCourt.
•Third place: Best news or feature series for coverage of the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster by the entire editorial staff.
•Third place: Best general news story “Education board votes against renewing Armstrong’s contract” by Richard Shaw.
•Third place: Best sports page titled “Carbon Lady Dinos show they are true champions at state” by Charles McManus.
•Third place: Best special section titled the Castle Country Vacation and Recreation Guide.
•Third place: Best in-house promotion for the Sun Advocate website by James Bailey.
•Third place: Best advertising idea for Kids Design an Ad by Kelly Wilkinson and Jenni Fasselin.
The Emery County Progress, the sister paper of the Sun Advocate that won first in it’s division last year also picked up a number of awards as well. First place plaques were awarded to the Progress in four categories and the paper also received six second place and two third place awards.
Overall the winners of the “General Excellence” award at the conference were the Spanish Fork News in category one, the Sun Advocate in category two, the Davis County Clipper in category three and the Salt Lake Tribune in category four.