Record staff earns state awards

Published 8:00 pm Wednesday, September 19, 2001

“Newsroom and advertising staff members at the South Whidbey Record took home several awards Saturday that rank the newspaper’s work as some of the best done in Washington this year.Judges at the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association’s annual Better Newspaper Awards lauded The Record staff for their achievements in writing, photography, and advertising design. Taking one of the most prestigious awards at the ceremony in Tacoma was columnist Betsy Roberts, who won a first place award in the Best General Column category.The Record competed in the division for non-daily newspapers with a circulation between 5,000 and 10,000.In the news division, Island Living editor Joan Soltys garnered a third-place award in Best Arts Feature for her story With a Thread of Applique. Reporter Matt Johnson received two writing awards – a second-place recognition for his humorous feature Stupid Criminal Stunts and a third-place award for sports reporting with the story Falcons Break Lyncs.In the photography portion of the contest, Johnson won three awards. In the black and white division, he received recognition for his portrait Sound Career Choice and for his feature photo of Langley Middle School students carrying a large, fiberglass pig. He also won an award for color spot news photography for a picture titled Don’t Look at Me – I Wasn’t Driving.The Record advertising staff earned the paper’s only other first-place award. In the Promotional Group of Ads category, Lorinda Kay and Abigail Hamilton grabbed first place for their Island Style advertisement and second place for Definitions in Design. In the color ads category, Kay, Hamilton, and Kathy Serra shared a second place award for their Red Tag Sale ad. “