Hesperia Star wins five SPJ awards

Tonight, the Hesperia Star won the most SPJ awards in the paper’s eight year history: five, including two for editorial writing.

As always, it was surprising to see what won, and what didn’t. The wildfires of last spring were popular at the awards, and my piece, Smoke-Out, won a third place award in the Breaking News Category. I don’t think the piece is as strong as my story about a Hesperia sheriff’s deputy being shot, but that’s how it goes.

My earlier guess was wrong: I did win an award about an infamous necrophiliac finally getting prison time in connection with his earlier violation of a child’s corpse. I was thrown off the scent because the award wasn’t listed as a Daily Press win, despite the story appearing in that paper. This also marks the fourth year in a row that I’ve won a Law Enforcement/Legal Affairs award (first time getting a first place award, and only my second first place award from the SPJs ever), which I worry will misrepresent what I was covering in Hesperia these years in future job interviews. No awards for my school board coverage or my California Charter Academy coverage, for instance, which dominated much of 2007 for me. Go figure.

And then there’s the award I have the most mixed feelings about: A second place editorial writing award for my piece on being a Virginia Tech alumnus in the wake of last April’s massacre. Jenn and Sharon have already stressed to me that I’m not capitalizing on a tragedy, but it still feels odd.

Overall, the Freedom High Desert papers cleaned up, with the Barstow Desert Dispatch in particular doing well — I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t been reading their multiple award-winning blog, but I clearly need to, especially since Peter wants one added to the Star’s site ASAP.

As always, it was a (reasonably) good time, although it almost feels like a Riverside Press-Enterprise recruiting event, between the ton of awards the PE and its associated papers get, and how happy everyone from the paper always looks (especially given the number of non-award-winning PE staffers who show up just to show support).

Peter got two awards as well: One was an editorial piece about founding father Val Shearer leaving Hesperia and the other was an entertainment piece about swing band Phat Cat Swinger. Peter always excels when writing about music, and it’s nice to see that recognized.

The full list of awards, and judges’ comments for many of them, will appear in the next day or so at the SPJ blog.

The envelope, please, redux …

I, Peter and ex-Daily Press reporter Hillary Borrud are among the winners of the 2007 Excellence in Journalism Awards given out by the Inland Southern California Society of Professional Journalists. What we’ve won, we don’t yet know, and won’t until the May 10 awards banquet in Riverside.

(Now, if my name had been listed under the Daily Press, I’d know in part, since I only submitted one DP story for the awards.)

Star wins three SPJ awards

I just got back from the Riverside Marriott, where the Inland Southern chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists just gave out the 2006 Southern California Excellence in Journalism Awards.

The Hesperia Star won three awards, with Peter bringing home the biggest kill: In an all-circulation category (meaning he was up against the Press-Enterprise, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and all the rest), he came in first for Best Editorial/Opinion Piece. The piece — “Censorship is wrong answer” — was never posted onto our old Web site, so on Monday, I’ll dig it out of the archives and post it on the Web for all to see.

I won two second place awards:

• The addicts next door, Second Place, Best Law Enforcement/Legal Affairs Story, Circulation Under 50,000
• The CCA Audit: One year later, Second Place, Best Governmental/Political Story, Circulation Under 50,000

The Daily Press also cleaned up, with a ton of awards for photographer Michael Stenerson. Reporter Tatiana Prophet pulled in the most reporting awards for the High Desert, by my guesstimate. El Mojave and the Desert Dispatch also won awards.

More details can be found in the Daily Press story and on the Star site this week.

Update #1: Peter’s editorial can be found here.

Update #2: Sadly, only one of the three award-winning pieces got commentary passed along by the SPJ judges.

SPJ Awards 2005: The High Desert winners list

Well, Peter and I just got back from tonight’s Society of Professional Journalists award dinner in Riverside. It’s always interesting seeing all the journalists in attendance, particularly what everyone feels is the dress code; there were folks there who looked like they were at prom, while there were others in jeans and ratty sweaters. (I split the difference, myself.)

The Daily Press, Desert Dispatch and Hesperia Star all had winners at this year’s awards in the circulation under 50,000 division:

Peter won third place in the News Photo division for his memorable “Pacific Storm” photo, of a flooded Rock Springs Road:

I picked up second place in Best Feature Story for They Ain’t Scared of No Ghost, second place in Best Law Enforcement/Legal Affairs Story for High-Flying in Hesperia and third place in Government/Political Story for Is Hesperia Casino Really Terminated?

This is my second award for a law enforcement story in two years, which I suspect will give a deceiving picture of what I was covering at the Hesperia Star in years to come. It’s also my second casino-related award, which is more indicative.

I didn’t bring my notebook with me to record what all the Daily Press and Desert Dispatch reporters won for, but fortunately, someone from the DP did: Local journalists bring home awards. (The staff reporter missed that Justin Boggs got both second and third place in the cultural/diversity writing category, though — he was at our table.)

Judges’ comments should be up on the official SPJ site next week, and I’ll link to them when they’re posted.

Three SPJ awards

I just picked up three awards at last night’s Society of Professional Journalists Inland Southern California Chapter banquet. Unlike how it normally works, where the work you’re really proud of gets skipped in favor of totally random stuff – the year I went to Bosnia, the Virginia Press Association award I won was for my play reviews instead – one of my awards was actually for something that I really sweat over last year, and that pretty much defined my first year writing for the Hesperia Star.

Third place, Continuing Coverage, “casino series.” My editor, Peter Day, and I shared an award for our coverage of the proposed Timbisha Shoshone casino project in Hesperia. This is especially gratifying, since there was a lot of pressure, political and otherwise, to stop covering this story, and let the loose ends of the proposal remain a secret from the public. It took approximately four months to put together the first major article I wrote on this, picking up from Peter’s coverage of the proposal and initial vote by the public.

Judge’s comments: “Great reporting on a hot-topic story. Shady past of developer is well-brought out, as is dysfunction within tribe.”

I can’t remember which five stories we submitted, but here is sampling of our casino coverage online:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six

Third place, Best Crime/Law Enforcement Story, “Citizens On Patrol.” This is a good example of a “huh?” award.

The COP program lets ordinary volunteers stretch the manpower of the Hesperia station of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department further, by picking up the slack and doing work like directing traffic around accident scenes, driving out to check on the homes of vacationing residents and calling shut-ins to make sure they’re OK.

I basically just covered the training process for the new class. But I don’t feel like this was one of my best efforts, or was likely to have been a better law enforcement story than most of those submitted. It all just depends on getting the right judges in the right mood, I guess.

Judge’s comments: “Nice slice of life cop activity seldom written about.”

The original story is online here.

First place, Best Cultural/Diversity Story, “Church serves gay community, performs same sex ‘holy unions.’” This was a story I did at the end of my first month at the Star, and the silence in response to writing it was deafening; there are many relatively conservative residents in Hesperia, and I was surprised to have heard from neither people offended by what the church was doing, nor people supporting it. This is another one I worked hard on to do just right, and it’s gratifying to finally hear it paid off.

Judge’s comments: “This story tackles a sensitive topic of gays and religion head-on with clarity and grace.”

The original story can be found online.

More information about the awards is available online at the SPJ site.

Anyway, this is a long way to go to say “woo hoo!”