Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: Elkader - Times-Register Entry Title: Keystone Bridge Entry Credit: Willis Patenaude Judge Comment: Nicely done, a reporter who has a strong handle on his craft, both in gathering and imparting information and writing well. Each story was clear and concise, giving the basic information needed, supplementing that with explanations, statements from the principles involved, and showing the mounting questions – and expenses – caused by continual problems found in the bridge restoration project. Each story gave a nice summary of what had happened to that point, reviewed the importance of the bridge project, then dove in to the current impetus behind the story.
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Estherville - Estherville News Entry Title: CO2 pipelines Entry Credit: Amy H Peterson Judge Comment: Nice overall job of following an important story line in the community, and pushing the pipeline company for more information than it wants to give. This is part of the service that is vital for community newspapers to do for their communities. The reporter did a good job of going after information and staying on the story over an extended period of time. Stories could have been stronger – the first one should have had a summary of what was going on, perhaps a paragraph explaining the pipeline project and what's going on (the third story had a nice example of this). The second story quotes the firm in question as saying it has a good reputation of working with landowners the right way – this coverage could have been stronger with a few phone calls to those other communities, find out what experiences were there. Still, this series of stories keep an important issue before the public, information readers need.
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Jefferson - The Jefferson Herald Entry Title: New Year's Eve cabin fire kills teen Entry Credit: Brandon Hurley Judge Comment: The reporter did a good job of following a tragic story, showing tragedy of the loss of one of the community's teens in a fire, while showing how the community was coming together to support his family, as well as a teen who survived the family. The third story, delving into the death of the teen and the community gathering for his memorial service, used a little too much opinion and a too-earnest attempt at overactive verbs for punching power. Other than that, this is well done series of stories following a tragic event.
