It's Press (Association) time

Apparently, it's the time of year when state press associations hold their annual conferences and awards banquets. I'm just back from the Virginia Press Association conference, held in Norfolk this year. At the same time, Bet from Dappled Things was taking her journalism students to the South Carolina Press Association conference in Spartanburg.

At Saturday evening's banquet, I won two first-place awards and a second-place award for my first-ever awards in my first full year at the newspaper. I took first in sports feature writing and first in sports news writing, with a second-place finish in sports event writing.

The awards are handed out according to type and size of publication (weekly/daily and circulation). Papers in the VPA range from tiny weeklies and twice-monthlies on up to the big daily papers like The Washington Post.

Our circulation is one of the lower in our classification, but everyone on our editorial staff took home at least one award. Writing (as opposed to photography and layout) was our strength, earning us enough points to finish fourth in the overall sweepstakes award for our fairly large classification. That was a suprise to all of us.

It was a nice weekend, with Darla taking Friday off so that she could come with me. We enjoyed two nights in a nice room on the 19th floor of the Marriott Waterside hotel in downtown Norfolk.

Posted by JRC at March 7, 2005 12:22 PM | TrackBack