The Garvin County News Star recently won six awards in the Oklahoma Press Association’s 2024 Better Newspaper Contest. The awards were presented during the Oklahoma Press Association’s annual convention in Shawnee June 6-7.
In the division for weekly publications in cities with a population between 6,000-20,000, the News Star’s Suzanne Mackey won first-place awards in the sports story, business story and in-depth reporting categories.
The first-place sports story award was for an article featuring Jennifer Samford, longtime Okie Noodling Tournament organizer, who had the opportunity to actually go noodling for the first time in 2024. The business story award was for an article on renovations to Pauls Valley’s historic Moody Hotel, and the in-depth reporting recognition was for an article on the city of Pauls Valley’s response to open meeting violations noted in a state audit released last year.
Mackey also won sec- ond place in the education story category and second and third place in the news story category.
Individuals were able to receive awards in 16 categories – news story, feature story, sports story, business story, education story, in-depth reporting, column writing, small space ad, large space ad, news photograph, feature photograph, sports photograph, photo essay/picture page, front page design, video journalism or marketing, and online project.
The contest also included a digital media category, awarded to the publication.
The Oklahoma Press Association recognized eight news organizations from around the state as winners of the prestigious Sequoyah Award, the highest honor in the Better Newspaper Contest. In the divisions for multi-day and online-only publications, winners were Enid News & Eagle, McAlester News-Capital and Choctaw Times. Sequoyah winners in the weekly divisions were the Midwest City Beacon, The Purcell Register, McIntosh County Democrat, and Minco-Union City Times. The Cameron University Collegian was the winner in the college news media division.
The Sequoyah Award is determined by the number of points accumulated in eight of the contest’s categories: news content, layout & design, advertising, editorial writing, photography, sports coverage, sales promotion and community leadership. The eight divisions are based on publication frequency and city/ town population.
Members of the Mississippi Press Association judged almost 1,400 entries from 71 Oklahoma news publications for the contest.
In addition to the eight Sequoyah Award winners, 173 first place plaques were presented during the awards banquet. News publications and individuals placing second and third in the contest received certificates.