Nine Prizewinners Picked from
within Bay Weekly’s Pages

Writers and designers take top honors

by Carrie Madren

Your weekly independent on the Bay — where you turn for behind-the-scenes stories, inspiring tales, a robust calendar, attractively useful advertising and news you’ll not find elsewhere — won praise and awards from readers outside Chesapeake Country.

Bay Weekly took home nine awards — including seven first place prizes — in Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia Press Association’s 2006 competition, with winners announced just last week. Judged by newspaper staffs in North Carolina’s press association, the Bay Weekly editorial staff claimed five awards. Our advertising artists designed four prizewinners.

photo by Cathy Miller Bringing it home are Sporting Life columnist Dennis Doyle, editor and co-founder Sandra Olivetti Martin, senior staff writer Carrie Madren and writer Ben Miller.

In our editorial division — non-dailies 10,000 to 20,000 copies — we competed against 33 newspapers, including Washington Business Journal, Capital Flyer, The Enterprise and The Calvert Recorder. Bay Weekly joined 21 other papers winning first and second place awards in our 37 editorial categories.

In our advertising division — non-dailies over 15,000 copies — we competed against 23 other newspapers, 16 winning first, second and third places in 20 categories.

1. In editorial prizes, editor in chief Sandra Olivetti Martin’s retrospective story Vera’s Last Act (Vol. XIV, No. 25: June 22) — a tribute to Vera Freeman, the glamorous and exotic proprietor of Vera’s White Sands Restaurant and Marina — won first place in the Feature Story category.

2. & 3. Bay Weekly columnists Bill Burton and Dennis Doyle swept the sports column category. Burton earned first place for The Last American Independents (Vol. XIV, No. 43: Oct. 26), his sixth prize during 14 years writing his Bay Weekly column on life outdoors, remembrances of days gone by and news and controversy in Maryland’s natural resources. This year, Burton couldn’t be on hand to collect his prize. While his colleagues cheered at Turf Valley Resort, this year’s annual conference and prize-giving venue, Burton was undergoing surgery to clear blocked arteries. Once he’s fitted with a pacemaker and defibrillator, he’ll be back writing — and giving Doyle a hard act to beat to first place.

Newcomer Doyle won second place for his Big Fish Fever (Vol. 14, #42: Oct. 19), a Sporting Life column on how big fish hook anglers and vice versa.

“Winning the award was kind of like fishing,” Doyle said. “If you use the best lures, you can create and keep on casting. Eventually you’ll hook a great fish.”

4. Writer and museum reviewer Ben Miller won first place in Education for his story Learning from Where They Live: Making the Chesapeake Their Textbook (Vol. 14, #17: April 27). Like Doyle, Miller came to Bay Weekly — and to writing — just last year; his earlier career was designing exhibits for the National Park Service. To win his prize, Miller documented the Chesapeake Bay Home Schooling Collaborative, where kids romp in streams and explore their region to learn life skills and lessons.

5. Staff writer Carrie Madren placed first in the arts and entertainment category — a first for Bay Weekly — for her Cracking the Nutcracker Code.

“A wonderful new and fresh approach to the annual Nutcracker story. Nice infusion of history, observation and personal style,” wrote the North Carolina Press Association judges.

6. & 7. In advertising, production manager Betsy Kehne chased down two first prizes, one for Bad Dog! an ad designed for Catherine’s Draperies in Deale; the second for Finely Crafted Fishing Boats for Good Dog Boats in Shady Side.

8. General manager Alex Knoll’s help-wanted ad for a Bay Weekly sales representative Time was … featured rocker Gene Simmons dressed in Kiss costume and claimed first place. We got the staff, but no rock stars.

9. Bay Weekly’s full staff won a second place for our 2006 debut Home and Garden Guide, which brought colorful gardening and home tips to readers for every month of the year.

“As a free weekly newspaper, we serve two masters: our readers and our advertisers. So the editorial awards and the advertising awards we’ve won this year are exciting, because it indicates that we’re doing a good job for both,” said general manager J. Alex Knoll of the awards.

“We have a crew of talented writers — staffers, columnists and freelancers — working hard every week to bring Bay Weekly readers great stories they aren’t likely to find anywhere else,” Knoll continued. “Similarly, we have a creative design team that wrestles with nearly 100 ads each week, trying to make them attractive, compelling and effective. Behind each ad, of course, is our sales team. Without them, there wouldn’t be a paper to win prizes.

“A tip of the hat from the judges of the North Carolina Press Association is testament to the great job all these people do — second only to the praise we hear from our readers.”

At the end of this year, we’ll again ask your guidance in culling prizewinners for a year of stories and ads.

© COPYRIGHT 2007 by New Bay Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.