Utah newspaper editors and publishers met in St. George over the weekend to commiserate over the economy, share strategies for the future and to recognize some of their accomplishments over the past year. The convention ended Saturday evening with the announcement of this year’s Better Newspaper contest winners at which Park Record received 17 awards.
Park Record photographers David Ryder and Scott Sine took first-place honors in news and sports photography respectively. Ryder’s winning image was of a local Latino family coping with the economic downturn and Sine’s award was for a spectacular photo of a cowboy being thrown from a bull. Ryder also earned second place in the feature-photo for his photo of a 100-year-old voter and second for his collage of mountain bike images.
Record art and production director Matt Gordon was instrumental helping the newspaper achieve first place honors for both front page and special section design. The judges were particularly impressed with the lay out for The Record’s Film Festival special section.
Three of The Record’s longtime columnists won awards in separate categories. Jay Meehan earned a first place for his column, Core Samples, Teri Orr came away with a second for Sunday in the Park and Tom Clyde’s humor piece, More Dogs on Main Street received a third-place certificate.
City reporter Jay Hamburger received second place for his breaking news coverage of the Angel House fire, third place for overall coverage of the gay rights protests and second place for a news feature about affordable housing in Park City.
Andrew Kirk’s feature series entitled “Salt of Summit County” earned a second place. The series highlighted people around the county who have unusual and tough jobs like ranching and oil rig work. Also, Adia Waldburger and Sarah Ely were recognized with a second place for the writing and design of a sports feature about a new local hockey team.
The advertising department earned two second-place awards, one for best use of color and one for an in-house promotion encouraging readers to browse through the monthly Flipside magazine. They also garnered a third place for an innovative ad concept.
The Record was competing against all of Utah’s weeklies and biweeklies with a circulation of over 6,000.