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TPA awards the Colorado County Citizen with first place in statewide contest
Over the weekend, the Colorado County Citizen achieved something that had not been done since 2019 as the newspaper collected first-place honors in the Texas Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. On Saturday, June 22, the Citizen once again some of the highest honors by winning first place overall at the statewide contest and claiming the sweepstakes for the paper’s 2023 content.
Citizen | Lydia Tello ABOVE: Editor Trenton Whiting and Publisher Tressa Alley display the plaques and certificates earned by the Citizen at the recent TPA Better Newspaper Contest. ■ SWEEPSTAKES, 14
The Citizen had a strong performance at the competition, taking first place in four categories, second place in four categories, one third-place finish and a fourth-place finish. Each award contributed to the Citizen earning 625 total points in the Division 6 contest for Weeklies, 125 points higher than the second-place finisher in the overall scoring.
The first-place awards were in Feature Writing, General Excellence, News Writing and Page Design. The Citizen won second place in Sports Coverage, Column Writing, Best Magazine and Special Section. A thirdplace finish in News Photography and a fourthplace finish in Headline Writing rounded out the awards for the Citizen.
Winners were selected by a panel that consisted of several editors and reporters from the Georgia Press Association as editors throughout the state ranked and assigned grades to each submission. Papers earned 100 points for each firstplace award, 75 points for each second-place award, 50 points for each third-place award and 25 points for fourth place.
The contest is amongst hundreds of Texas Newspapers as each division is highly competitive.
The sweepstakes victory marks one of the Cit izen’s top performances at the contest in its recent history. Since its sweepstakes award in 2019, the Citizen had gotten as close as second place at the 2022 conference. The designation as overall champion in Division 6 confirms the Citizen’s spot as one of the top newspapers in the state.
“We are very proud of this outcome since we’ve been working so hard at giving our community the best possible content,” Publisher Tressa Alley said, “Without the community’s involvement, there’s no way this would be possible. Huge thanks to all the readers, subscribers and advertisers that have supported the paper and helped us achieve this milestone.”
Several staff members and contributors throughout 2023 added valuable content to the paper that was submitted for the contest. Publisher Tressa Alley, Editor Trenton Whiting, Sports Editor Evan Hale, Andre Mathis, Shayla Kuykendall, and various Granite Media Partners’ page designers such as Richard Davis and Valerie Hernandez made many of the in-house contributions to the victory. Columnist Nancy Stiles aided the Citizen in earning the silver medal in column writing as well.
“I’m so proud to be able to be part of such a high-performing group,” Editor Trenton Whiting said, “We wouldn’t have been able to do this without strong teamwork and the help of the community taking their relationship with the paper seriously.”
With the sweepstakes plaque in hand, the Citizen plans on displaying the awards in the front lobby of the office.
