LITTLE ROCK – The Nashville News won four first place awards and was named runner up in general excellence Saturday during the Arkansas Press Association’s annual awards luncheon.
Winning entries included those in the humorous column, single sports feature photo, best special section and coverage of business and agriculture categories.
Judges praised the paper’s election guide in the special section division, calling it “the most comprehensive election guide we have ever seen,” while offering similar praise to the range of stories submitted in the coverage of business and agriculture category.
The column which won the humor division was an irreverent take on the exportation of United States cattle genetics to Russia penned by Publisher Mike Graves, which judges said made its point well.
Finally, Luke Reeder won best sports feature photo with a shot of a Scrapper baseball player reacting to a season-ending loss last year, which judges said was “very clean” and featured a “nice use of shallow field of depth.”
Second place entries for the paper were in the categories of feature story, political column, picture page, best sports page, coverage of tourism and coverage of health. Third place entries included those in the editorial and headline writing categories.
The paper also earned numerous honorable mentions for other entries.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our staff or the hard work they did last year, and these awards are just a small way of recognizing that excellence,” said Charles Goodin, the paper’s editor. “As always, we owe a debt of gratitude to the readers and advertisers who allow us to earn these honors.”
The Nashville News competes with papers from across the state of Arkansas in the medium weekly division of the contest.
