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And
the winners are
by JUDY HODGSON
SATURDAY WAS A BIG DAY for the
editorial staff of the North Coast Journal. We traveled
to San Francisco to pick up three awards from the 2002 Better
Newspapers Contest sponsored by the California Newspaper Publishers
Association.
The awards were all second places,
but since there are only two awards given in each category for
weeklies throughout the state with similar circulations and much
larger budgets, we are very proud of them.
Journal
staff writer Emily Gurnon, formerly of the Contra Costa Times
and the San Francisco Examiner, won in the feature category
for her cover story, "Worlds
of Pain: Why so many Humboldt kids can't get dental care"
(Aug. 29, 2002). Emily researched and reported on the reasons
behind the crisis: a shortage of children's dentists, especially
those who will accept low-income patients; poor hygiene, nutrition
and other socioeconomic factors; and what steps are being taken
toward better care.
Editor Keith Easthouse, who
came to the Journal in April 2002 via the Santa Fe
New Mexican and Forest Magazine, brought home
two CNPAs. His July 18, 2002
cover, "Deep trouble: Alarm bells sounded 20 years ago about
overharvesting rockfish. So why the crisis now?" won
for environmental and agricultural resource reporting. The article
was a remarkable piece of history focusing on the demise of a
single group of fish. Who would have thought that a major culprit
is the amazing longevity of the fish itself and the lengthy time
(15 years) females take to reach sexual maturity? (In addition
to overharvesting, of course.)
Keith's second award, for investigative
and enterprise reporting, was certainly our most controversial
cover of the year: "Poisoned
slough: Shellfish near Sierra Pacific's Arcata mill tainted with
dioxin" (June 13, 2002).
Next to "general excellence,"
the CNPA award for investigative journalism is the most prized
-- and the most difficult to attain. Entries require extensive
research and an above-average amount of interviewing, documentation
and background research. We submitted a package of coverage that
included the original in-depth story, subsequent editorials and
stories, and even letters from readers. In his cover letter in
which he was supposed to summarize obstacles the staff overcame
in digging out facts and sifting through complexities to render
the coverage meaningful, Keith wrote:
"The story created an uproar
in portions of the Arcata business community -- not the least
because the story hit the streets just days before the community's
annual oyster festival. The paper was accused of deliberately
trying to sabotage the festival and there were reports, later
confirmed, that festival officials had papers pulled from the
racks.
"In the next week's issue,
the publisher defended the story's timing, arguing that to have
run the story after the festival would have been cowardly. A
story in the same issue revealed that the state had known since
the early 1980s that a wood preservative often associated with
dioxin was present in shellfish near the Sierra Pacific mill
-- and yet had done nothing to warn the public.... Despite the
fact that Humboldt Bay had then -- and still does today -- a
thriving commercial oyster industry, the state took no action.
No additional testing was conducted, no public health warnings
were issued.
"The Journal's coverage
prompted testing of the commercial oyster beds out in the bay
that revealed low levels of dioxin in every oyster bed tested."
The problem with winning awards,
of course, is that they are like chocolate: You want more. Already
I am pawing through my stack of 2003 Journals, debating
our chances. "Is the
water bag proposal a trojan horse?" (Feb. 6) is one
possibility. "The tourism
myth" (May 1) and "The
problem with plastics" (June 5) are also on my short
list.
By the way, even though these
awards are for editorial content and carry the byline of the
writer, they are earned by the entire staff -- our talented and
artsy production crew, our very hard-working sales staff, the
administrative staff and, of course, Judy Campbell's band of
merry delivery people.
To view these award-winning
stories, along with all our back issues, explore our website.
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