Sentinel staff wins 13 VPA awards
Members of the Southside Sentinel staff won 13 awards, including six first-place honors, in the 2009 news contest sponsored by the Virginia Press Association.
Ten of the awards were presented to the Sentinel and three went to The Rivah Visitor’s Guide, jointly produced by the Sentinel and the Rappahannock Record in Kilmarnock.
Sentinel multimedia manager Mike Kucera led the staff with five individual awards (three of them firsts) and four more shared with other staff writers and photographers.
Reporter Larry Chowning took first in the public safety writing category with a three-part series on alcohol and drug abuse problems and how these problems are being addressed at the local level. The judges said the reporter “puts a human face on each story in the series, which makes the stories about the programs help these people with their problems more pertinent to the community. Well written and well presented, the stories made me care about the people in them.”
Led by editor Tom Hardin, the staff won first for the Sentinel’s front pages. Hardin assembles the front page each week but is assisted by others who prepare photos, artwork, etc. The judges said the “fonts are clean, headlines the appropriate size. The ‘At A Glance’ is a nice touch, with 3-D-like background and attractive stand-alone photo at bottom left. A clean look, very easy to read.”
Another first-place award went to the Windows on the Bay supplement produced annually by the Sentinel and the Record. All supplements and The Rivah Visitor’s Guide were coordinated last year by Susan Simmons and Reid Pierce-Armstrong from the Record. Judges said the section was “well-written, well-designed and polished overall.”
For the Sentinel, Kucera won firsts in multimedia news reporting for his video on the restoration of the buyboat “F.D. Crockett” at the Deltaville Maritime Museum and in the online video category for coverage of student archaeologists during a dig at Fairfields. He took second in the multimedia news reporting category for his report on last year’s Wings and Wheels celebration at Hummel Field, and second for an online video on Oyster Festival Education Day at the Urbanna waterfront.
Kucera and Chowning shared second in multimedia feature reporting for a print and online feature on Urbanna’s Buyboat Homecoming. Kucera and reporter Tom Chillemi shared third in the online slideshow category for coverage of an arts show at the Taylor Building in Urbanna.
Sentinel art director Julie Burwood won a second-place award in the page design category. Burwood designs most of the supplement and Rivah Visitor’s Guide covers and some interior pages.
For The Rivah Visitor’s Guide, Kucera took first in online videos for a feature on the restored Montague family cruiser in Urbanna. Kucera, Chillemi and Record reporter Lisa Hinton-Valdrighi shared a second place award for an online slideshow highlighting County Fairs in Gloucester and Warsaw. Kucera and Chowning shared third in multimedia features for printed and online features on the sailmaking tradition in Deltaville.
All of the online features were on SSentinel.com and most also appeared on RRecord.com.
The Sentinel competed against other weekly newspapers in Virginia with a similar subscription base and The Rivah Visitor’s Guide competed against specialty publications of all sizes in the state. The 2009 contest was judged by members of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.
