SPJ announced the winners of its annual “Excellence in Journalism” competition on Friday night. Congratulations to all the journalists who took home awards that night.
The big winner was the Honolulu Advertiser, the newspaper that was dismantled to create the new Honolulu Star-Advertiser, which was boosted by William Cole’s “Bad Blood: The Ambush of Chosen Company in Afghanistan”, which took top honors in seven categories.
I suppose its good news that many of the former Honolulu Advertiser staffers who won awards this year are among those now at the Star-Advertiser, including Cole, Andrew Gomes, Mary Vorsino, Dave Shapiro, Rob Perez, and Mike Gordon.
In the “Open Print” category, where publications of all sizes and types compete head-to-head, Honolulu’s daily newspapers were aced out in major categories. The top award for government reporting went to Nancy Cook Lauer of West Hawaii Today. The sports reporting category was topped by Don Chapman of Midweek. Best editorial went to Pat Tummons of Environment Hawaii. Top in news photography was William Ing of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.
The dailies took their share of awards but, overall, now face a very competitive environment.
Diane Ako and Tracy Arakaki won first place in feature reporting for television, and another piece by Ako was a finalist in the same category. Both Ako and Arakaki were among those laid off following the three-way merger of KHNL, KGMB, and KFVE, as was Leland Kim, who took SPJ’s top honors for public service reporting for television.
I think SPJ needs to rethink its categories for online journalism, which currently reflect the old model of mainstream newspaper or television stories repackaged for their web sites. The categories don’t reflect the diversity or growing importance of online journalism independent of MSM.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Okay, let’s take a deep breath and step back.
The “Bad Blood” package was great work and certainly deserves praise, but top awards in seven categories was obviously excessive.
In my opinion, awarding Shapiro for anything besides abusing his forum to pollute the public discourse and vastly lower any notions of actual journalism and acceptable standards is just sad, and makes it that much harder to take any of this very serious.
Others may disagree, but let’s not kid ourselves.
I’m naturally prejudiced, but pleased to point out that editor Mary Poole’s Hawaii Statehood project won a top award not just in the SPJs, but in the earlier Pa’i awards. Her judgment isn’t all that great, however, since she married me, after all.
Bravo!
All those awards also means that the Advertiser could afford to make multiple entries of stories. Star-Bulletin editors were limited to just a couple. Also interesting that for the first time in years, the SB Op-Ed section didn’t get a single award.
With due respect to the culture of news and those that have really helped the world in the past.
I think some local “online” awards to those that can break news faster then journalist and/or newspapers can do… is due.
Please never nominate me… as I can’t spell or get grammar correct!
Newspapers… is supposed to be “news”. I hope someone like me doesn’t spoil someones re-written release as their own “news” as so often happens in our papers on the Big Island.
I think a real shift in ideology about what “NEWS” really is, should be a subject matter that needs to be discussed in general.
Generally… anything that is “Printed” now… IS OLD NEWS!
Thanks for the mention, Ian.
🙂
N
Well, congrats on the SPJ recognition! You deserve it.
Often, but granted not always, what looks to be rewriting press releases is actually a public official’s spinmeisters putting out preemptive press releases when reporters start poking around asking questions.
Interesting observation. Thanks for pointing it out.