I was on the SVH staff team that earned a third-place showing in the environment and energy category with our series Skagit Warming. This is a highly competitive region, with papers from five states vying for awards (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska).

Unfortunately the two reporters who got the most, Josh Lintereur (four, including two first place) and Franny White (three, with two first place), are either gone or leaving soon. That’s turnover in a small community daily. It seems like there’s a lot more turnover here than anywhere else I’ve been. Maybe it’s because people who live here are transplants from somewhere else. Franny and Josh both moved back to their home towns to work.

Franny’s replacement, Aaron Burkhalter, nabbed first place for his work at the Port Orchard Independent for consumer and environmental affairs reporting.

Frank Garred, who earned the June Almquist Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in open government, gave a long but worthwhile speech about the role of journalism and community newspapers. He said awards are earned, not won (hence the use of earned throughout here). Garred also said awards shouldn’t prove the worth of a journalist, because readers will let reporters know if they liked the reporting or not. I have to say this true.

Unlike most situations where you only hear feedback when someone is ticked off, I find that I also get a fair amount of fan mail when I write a good story. Two that immediately come to mind are my Valentine’s Day cynicism story, and a story about local food banks feeling the pinch.

It’s nice to get mail from people who say they liked a story. But it’s also nice to get recognized by your peers and add awards to your resume.

On a final note, I was happy to see The (Centralia) Chronicle get so many awards. They had awesome flood coverage from last fall, and their multimedia coverage of the flood was impressive given their relatively small size. I also love their clean Web site design.

The series won first place in the Pioneer Newspapers’ annual Recognizing Excellence award. I love group projects, so it was a lot of fun diving into this issue. My only regret is I didn’t produce multimedia for this project. I can’t complain, though, because right after I had concluded the reporting on this series, the editors started having me do audio for other stories I worked on. We’ll be ready for the next project.