Moultrie Observer honored among best in Georgia
Published 2:47 pm Monday, June 12, 2023
- Several staffers of The Moultrie Observer attended the Georgia Press Association's 136th annual convention last week at Jekyll Island, Ga., where The Observer won the General Excellence category for its circulation division. From left are Laurie Gay, publisher and advertising manager for The Observer as well as publisher of The Valdosta Daily Times, The Tifton Gazette and the Thomasville Times-Enterprise; Kasmira Smith, reporter for The Observer; Mary Beth Yeary, who designs pages for The Observer and other newspapers as part of a central design desk based in Valdosta; and Kevin C. Hall, managing editor of The Observer.
JEKYLL ISLAND — The Moultrie Observer was named one of the top newspapers in Georgia Friday evening at the Georgia Press Association’s annual banquet.
The Observer received first place honors in the General Excellence category for weekly newspapers with a circulation between 2,000 and 3,799.
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The General Excellence award is based on a point system. Newspapers receive points for winning awards in the other categories of the GPA’s Better Newspaper Contest and the GPA Advertising Contest. The newspaper with the most points in its division wins the General Excellence Award.
The contests covered work published during 2022.
Better Newspaper Contest
In addition to General Excellence, The Observer won 12 news awards. Some went to specific individuals and others to the whole staff.
Most newspaper categories involved multiple stories or pages that were judged together as one entry. The photograph categories generally involved only one image, and entries in most magazine categories involved only a single item.
Awards The Observer won in the Better Newspaper Contest included:
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• Lifestyle Coverage, first place.
• Sports Section, first place, Wayne Grandy.
• Headline Writing, third place.
• Editorial Writing, second place, Kevin C. Hall.
• Sports Photograph, first place, Connie Southwell, for a dramatic photo from the Colquitt-Lowndes football game that published in the Oct. 26 Moultrie Observer.
• Education Writing, third place, Jack R. Jordan.
• Local News Coverage, first place.
• Magazine Product, second place, for Moultrie Scene.
• Magazine Human Interest Story, first place, Kasmira Smith, for a profile on Dr. Jose Vargas, a Moultrie man who overcame immigration challenges to become a dentist. The article appeared in the September 2022 issue of Moultrie Scene.
• Magazine Human Interest Story, second place, Jack R. Jordan, for a profile of Katie Arnold, a Moultrie tattoo artist. The article appeared in the July 2022 issue of Moultrie Scene.
• Magazine Business Feature, first place, Payton D. Fletcher, for an article about DeMott Tractor’s 65th anniversary. The article appeared in the May 2022 issue of Moultrie Scene.
• Magazine Themed Issue, third place, for Moultrie Scene’s Holiday issue.
GPA Advertising Contest
The Observer also won five awards in the Georgia Press Association Advertising Contest:
• Real Estate, first place, Mattco Realty.
• Real Estate, second place, Alderman Classic Realty.
• Home Furnishings and Appliances, first place, South Georgia Floors.
• Apparel, Jewelry and Accessories, first place, Lazarus.
• Small Page Ad, second place, Dalton’s.
Other winners
The Better Newspaper Contest has six divisions, based on circulation, and in three of those divisions a Southwest Georgia newspaper owned by CNHI won the General Excellence Award: The Moultrie Observer, The Valdosta Daily Times and The Tifton Gazette.
Other top newspapers were The Brunswick News, The Walton Tribune (Monroe, Ga.) and Smoke Signals (Big Canoe, Ga.).
The Elberton Star won the prestigious Freedom of Information Award for doing the most during 2022 to uphold the principles of the First Amendment and to protect the public’s right to know. The Star was honored for work investigating a political contribution made by Elbert Memorial Hospital — a contribution the public hospital later took back.
The Valdosta Daily Times and the Monroe County Reporter (Forsyth, Ga.) won the Community Service awards in the daily and weekly divisions.
Two journalists under the age of 30 with less than five years of experience were honored with the Emerging Journalist Award. The daily newspaper winner was Hunter Riggall of the Marietta Daily Journal. The weekly newspaper winner was Liz Wright of The Augusta Press.
The photo of the year was taken by Beth Farrington for the Morgan County Citizen of Madison. It won the first-place award in the Spot News Photo category of the contest in Division D (the same division The Observer competed in). It was then chosen from among all first-place photos as the overall photo winner. Farrington’s photo shows a fireman comforting a dog receiving oxygen after it was rescued from a house fire in Morgan County last summer.
