JEKYLL ISLAND, Ga. — The Georgia Press Association honored the winners of the 2019 Freedom of Information Award and the 2019 Better Newspaper Contest on Friday at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel during the group’s 133rd annual convention.

The Moultrie Observer and its news staff received nine awards at the convention, including four for various aspects of sports coverage. In addition, the newspaper won eight awards — six of them first places — in an advertising contest also sponsored by the Georgia Press Association.

The awards were for work produced during calendar year 2018.

News

Reporter Alan Mauldin received The Observer’s only first place news award, in the Enterprise Reporting category.

Sports Editor Matthew Brown received three second-place awards for Sports Column, Sports Feature Photo and Sports Photo; and he got a third-place award for overall Sports Section.

Managing Editor Kevin Hall received a third-place award for Business Writing.

Other awards were shared by the staff as a whole.

In general, the categories are judged among newspapers of similar size, but if a single category doesn’t have enough entries, those entries it does have must compete in the next larger group. The Observer won a second-place award for Layout and Design in competition against larger newspapers. The category was won by the LaGrange Daily News.

The Observer also placed second in the Page One category and third in Local News, both competing against newspapers of about its own size.

Advertising

The Observer’s ad staff won first-place awards in the following categories:

• Apparel, Jewelry and Accessories, for ads for Cranford Jewelry.

• Non-Traditional, for its First Ladies publication.

• Miscellaneous, for ads related to the Moultrie Farmers Market.

• Special Section, for the 2018 Moss Farms section.

• Signature Page, for the monthly page devoted to the Colquitt County Arts Center.

• Small-Page Ad, for ads for Holman Supply Co.

In addition, the staff won second-place awards in the Food and Newspaper Promotion categories. The Food ads were for Blue Sky Grill, and the Newspaper Promotion was for Colquitt County High School Packer football.

Other awards

The Valdosta Daily Times won the prestigious Freedom of Information Award for doing the most during 2018 to uphold the principles of the First Amendment and to protect the public’s right to know. The Daily Times was honored for its continuing efforts throughout the year to educate the public and public officials about Georgia’s sunshine laws.

Two young journalists were honored as winners of GPA’s Emerging Journalist Awards. Journalists younger than 30 with less than five years of experience writing professionally for a newspaper — one from the state’s daily newspapers and one from the state’s weeklies — were honored for demonstrating excellence and maintaining high standards of quality and ethics. The daily newspaper winner was Isabel Hughes of the Gwinnett Daily Post of Lawrenceville. The weekly newspaper winner was Sydney Taylor of The News Observer of Blue Ridge.

There were 622 awards presented in 46 categories to 71 newspapers. Judging was done by members of the South Carolina Press Association in February and early March. A total of 80 newspapers entered at least one category in this year’s contest.