I know I've written about my job a lot. But I've got to show off a bit this time.
Last weekend was our annual press convention, two days of workshops and seminars that culminate in an awards banquet. At said banquet, the top three in each category are announced and overall winners are named. Another state's press association judges Nebraska's entries, so awards are essentially one person's opinion.
That being said, the Independent Group (Seward County Independent, Milford Times, Friend Sentinel and Wilber Republican) did exceptionally well. In fact, the Independent won the overall sweepstakes award. That is determined by totaling the awards given, with each place weighted accordingly. We've never won this particular award. Ever. No paper in the Rhoades Publishing company (all the papers owned by the company that owns us) has ever won the sweepstakes award. So we're breaking ground here. And it's AWESOME! The sweepstakes award is truly a newspaper-wide award. All the departments are included, so we're all in this together, as Red Green was fond of saying.
Let me reiterate. THIS IS AWESOME! I'm still pretty excited, and we got the award Saturday. YEAH!
And then I got a few awards myself. In the Friend paper, I won first place for a picture I took of the Exeter-Milligan volleyball team winning the state title. I also got third place for a story I wrote about the Friend wrestling team and third place for the sports pages. This is the second year I've won for my pages in Friend. Woo hoo! In the Seward paper, I won first place for a story I wrote about Doyle Trout, a four-time state champion wrestler who lost a leg in a car accident. I'll be honest - I really wanted to win for that story. Not only was it great human interest story, I thought I did a good job writing it. I also won third place for a story I wrote about a family whose horses were injured in a tornado. The three sisters in the family worked to help the horses recover and they were all at the county fair. That was a pretty cool story, too.
So, it was a good convention overall.
Hooray us!
