The Utah Press Association held its Winter Convention in St. George on March 5, 6 and 7, 2015 and it was a rousing success as members of the organization from all over the state attended.
The convention included workshops, speakers and one of the most anticipated events of the year for local media, the results of the 2014 Better Newspaper Contest.
Newspapers across the state competed with each other in 26 categories, with papers being broken into three groups. Group one includes papers with a circulation of 2500 or less. Group two is rated by circulation numbers between 2500 and 6000. Group three are papers that are above 6000. Group four are the daily papers that run 365 days a year in the state.
While awards are given in each category the most sought after award is that of general excellence, which is only presented to one paper in each group, based on the points accumulated by securing awards in all the categories.
While not winning the general excellence award for 2014 the Sun Advocate came in second in the competion in group 2. The group two excellence winner was the Uintah Basin Standard, which is distributed all over Duchesne County.
This year the winner of excellence in group one was The Signpost, the Weber State University student newspaper. This paper serves the Weber State campus and beyond.
The top paper in group three was the Tooele Transcript Bulletin which serves Tooele County communities.
And in a big change this year, the top paper in the daily category was the Provo Daily Herald, which is the daily paper for all of Utah County. In the past number of years this honor has remained largely with the two Salt Lake papers, The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News.
In the lead up to the awards night each paper that participated submitted materials from their papers to a website from which those articles, photos and other materials are sent to a judging body outside the state. This years judging was done by the West Virginia Press Association.
The Sun Advocate won five first place awards, two second place awards and nine third place awards. The first place awards were for best feature photo, best news photo, best photo page, best feature series and best advertising idea. The second place awards came for best sports column and best staff produced run of press ad campaign. The third place awards came for best news coverage, best front page, best editorial, best lifestyle page, best sports page, best staff produced ad, best circulation promotion, best website and best use of ad color.
Other awards presented during the three day conference were the Master Publisher and Editor Award which went to the tandem publishers of the Southern Utah News in Kanab, Dennis and Dixie Brunner. An award, named the Jim Cornwell Award for Service to the Industry went to John Serfustini, who has been a stalwart in the media business for 40 years working at the Salt Lake Tribune, the Deseret News, The Wasatch Wave in Heber and two terms of service at the Sun Advocate in Price.
The association also inducted another past publisher into the Utah Press Association’s Hall of Fame by honoring Kuniko Maramatsu Terasawa, who published the Utah Nippo, a Japanese language newspaper in the intermountain area by herself from 1939 to 1991. The paper, that served the Japanese immigrant and Japanese American community since 1915 was started by her husband, and when he died in 1939 she took over.
To be inducted into the Utah Press Association Hall of Fame an individual has to have been deceased at least 10 years. Terasawa worked on her newspaper up until the day before she died at the age of 95. Those honored have a plaque placed in a display at the Utah State Capitol building on the lower level of the structure near the Press Room entrance. Terasawa makes the 68th person so honored.
In addition to the other awards the Richfield Reaper received the Community Service Award for 2014 for their work on suicide awareness in communities in Sevier, Paiute, Wayne and south Sanpete counties.
The Sun Advocate took first place (General Excellence Award) at last years convention have have taken that award 11 times since the awards began in 1951. In the last 10 years it has won the General Excellence Award four times.
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