Coverage of a Sept. 25, 2014 rally in support of W. 21st St. tenants was part of Chelsea Now’s Third Place win in the Best News or Feature Series category.
Given the newsprint medium’s relentless and unforgiving cycle of deadlines, knocking off on a Friday to skip town is unheard of…except once a year, when the publishers, editors, designers and sales force from NYC Community Media and Community News Group trek upstate to attend the New York Press Association’s spring convention. This year, it took place March 27–29.
There, in scenic but too-quiet Saratoga Springs — between seminars, schmoozing, and trash talk about the NCAA brackets of our rivals — the Better Newspaper Contest winners were announced. This year, 177 newspapers statewide submitted nominations judged by juries of peers, from out of state.
When the dust settled and the last award plaque was handed out, the newspapers of NYC Community Media (Chelsea Now, Gay City News, The Villager/East Villager and Downtown Express) and the Community News Group, owned by Jennifer and Les Goodstein, earned 12 First Place Awards and 40 awards overall. The Goodsteins’ group placed second among all newspaper groups in New York State.
Chelsea Now took home four honors, and the rare distinction of placing twice within two categories. Dusica Sue Malesevic and Scott Stiffler won Honorable Mention and Second Place, respectively, for their Feature Story work. Stiffler wrote about the Irish Repertory Theatre’s temporary move from W. 22nd St. to Union Square’s DR2 Theatre (while their longtime home undergoes major renovation), and Malesevic profiled Chelsea resident and filmmaker Sharon Greytak.
In the Best News or Feature Series category, Chelsea Now was recognized for its work in both of those areas. Third Place honors went to Dusica Sue Malesevic, Winnie McCroy and Sam Spokony. The judge praised their “excellent series of [news] stories on the plight of a sometimes forgotten group of people,” in reference to Spokony’s article (“Hudsonview Terrace Tenants Paying the Price for Broken Promises”) and the Malesevic/McCroy investigations into the harassment of tenants at 222-224 W. 21st St.
Four articles and an editorial page excerpt took Second Place in the Series category. The judge declared this collective effort to be “well-written, with a nice depth of coverage.” Profiling a multitude of local mom and pop shops were Dusica Sue Malesevic, Frank Meade, Roger Miller, Scott Stiffler and Carlye Waxman. The subject matter included Stiffler’s examination of dwindling gay-centric businesses on Eight Ave., Waxman’s visit to the new Down to Earth Farmer’s Market and Meade’s Talking Point on the exit of Alan’s Alley from Ninth Ave. As readers of an article in our March 12, 2015 edition know, the Alley relocated to the fifth floor at 164 W. 25th St. — where Alan Sklar continues to rent DVDs and run rings around the algorithms of online streaming services in matters of insightful viewing recommendations.
Pardon us for hammering it home: Chelsea Now’s profile of the Irish Repertory Theatre’s temporary move to Union Square won Second Place in the Better Newspaper Contest’s Feature Story category — essentially forcing us to write this really long photo caption. You think this is bad? Check out the length of our headlines! Pictured: Irish Rep co-founders Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly administer a little tough love to the wall of their W. 22nd St. theatre.
Chelsea Now editor Scott Stiffler shared an Honorable Mention in the Best Obituaries category with The Villager’s editor in chief, Lincoln Anderson, and freelance writer Albert Amateau (the award went to The Villager). Stiffler’s contribution to that Honorable Mention also ran in Nov. 20, 2014 edition of Chelsea Now, as an obit within the arts section (“Jerry Tallmer, 93, Wrote With Heart About The Soul”).
Our sister publications also fared well.
Gay City News returned with a total of 11 awards for editorial, design, and advertising excellence. For the second year in a row, GCN placed first in Coverage of Religion — for stories that Arthur S. Leonard, Andy Humm, and Paul Schindler wrote about recent controversies over religious exemption laws as well as Michael Luongo’s feature examining the relationship among the Vatican, the Italian government, and that nation’s LGBT community. One judge wrote that Luongo’s piece offered “a perspective I haven’t read elsewhere.”
A first place award also went to the newspaper for its Editorial Pages, the judges lauding “outstanding editorials with well presented viewpoints” and recognizing the work of Kelly Cogswell, Nathan Riley, Ed Sikov, and Schindler. The newspaper’s website homepage also snagged a first place award.
Gay City News (and Chelsea Now) art director Michael Shirey scored a first place for Multi-Advertiser Pages for his design of the Gay City News Family Pride pages, which judges rated a “perfect promotion…nicely designed [with] simple page headers and a single background color [that] provide continuity between pages, while differing colors easily distinguish each advertiser.” The newspaper was also recognized with a second place in Community Leadership for its role in producing community forums on education and on Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis.
Duncan Osborne and Schindler were recognized with a third place finish in Coverage of Crime, and Shirey and Schindler were given a third place award for Overall Design Excellence. The design award recognized, in the judges’ words, “a newspaper that puts emphasis on its articles, using design to make long-form journalism readable and accessible.”
Shirey earned a third place for Best House Ad Campaign for the promotion of the Best of Gay City Contest, which the judges said used “brilliant colors and bold graphics” to create “excitement… in the air.”
The Villager won 13 awards, including four first place finishes.
Anderson was awarded first place for Editorials. The three Villager editorials submitted included a “combo” one supporting Mayor de Blasio’s proposed ban on horse carriages while also advocating for the fledgling Citi Bike bike-share program; another hailing Justice Donna Mills’s ruling in State Supreme Court that three of the “open-space strips” on the NYU-owned superblocks are impliedly parkland — which threw a huge monkey wrench into the university’s South Village mega-development plan; and a third editorial urging leadership from de Blasio after a madman gunned down two officers amid the wave of anti-police protests following the nonindictment in the Eric Garner case. Reading the editorials, the Midwestern judge for this category felt transported to the Village.
“The newspaper did a commendable job of engaging readers in the topics of the editorials, and left no doubt about which position it took,” the judge wrote. “The paper also backed up its positions and led readers to see — even if they disagreed with the stances taken — why the paper’s views were supported by the facts. The editorials made me feel like I was a resident living with the issues presented.”
Anderson also won first place for News Story for his article on the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who overdosed on heroin in a Bethune St. apartment last February.
The judge for this category, out of fairness, consciously tried not to be “starstruck.”
“Not everybody has a celebrity die in their midst, so you have to look past the star appeal,” he or she wrote. “With that said, this entry was a hands-down winner. This story covered the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman from all angles, and left the reader with very few unanswered questions. I liked the way he drew the reader in with firsthand reactions from ‘fans,’ before getting to the nitty-gritty details of the death. A great read!”
Cartoonist Ira Blutreich and photographers Milo Hess, Q. Sakamaki, and Jonathan Alpeyrie also earned first place awards.
The Villager was also recognized for Editorial Pages, Overall Design Excellence, Photographic Excellence, Crime Coverage, Coverage of Religion, Obituaries, Columnist, Art Photo, and its LGBT Pride Special Section Cover.
Villager graphic designer Chris Ortiz snagged second place for Best Special Section Cover. His winning Gay Pride section cover blended a shot of a woman flashing a peace sign with one of a Gay Pride rainbow flag.
“Very eye-catching!” the judge praised. “Nice job combining photos and choice of colors.”
In addition, The Villager took third place for Best Editorial Page.
Downtown Express, helmed by Josh Rogers, won a first place award for an art photo by Milo Hess.
NYC Community Media’s new affiliates at the Community News Group, which has titles in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, were also winners in Saratoga.
The Brooklyn Paper took home two top prizes, earning the gold for their beautifully designed front pages, and getting an A-plus as a tutor to the journalists of tomorrow with a “Rookie Reporter of the Year” award.
The Paper’s staff also took home two second-place awards — one to photographer Paul Martinka for best spot-news photo (“It’s a sneaky kind of photo,” wrote the judges), and one for headline writing, including the instant classic ”It’s raining mensch” (“We think you had a little too much fun,” wrote the judges).
The Brooklyn Paper’s sister Brooklyn publication, the Bay News, won a second-place award for Coverage of Local Government thanks to a series of stories by Max Jaeger about the city’s “Build it Back” Superstorm Sandy recovery program, and Colin Mixson, Bill Ebert, Vanessa Ogle, and Jaeger brought home a third-place award for Coverage of the Environment thanks to their series on the planned elimination of mute swans living in Sheepshead Bay that the judges called “as entertaining as it is important.
In Queens, editor Roz Liston’s Bayside Times earned first place for Editorials and second place for Editorial Pages. The Times Ledger, which Liston also edits, earned second and third place in Spot News Coverage and an honorable mention for Coverage of Local Government.
Of the many honors, Jennifer Goodstein said, “We’re pleased that our newspapers are serving the boroughs across the city with the highest standards of excellence as judged by our peers in the industry. Every week, we’re proud to demonstrate the vital role community newspapers play in the neighborhoods that are home to them.”
—by Scott Stiffler, with additional text by Lincoln Anderson, Vince DiMiceli and Paul Schindler.
