The Martha’s Vineyard Times won awards across many journalism, advertising, photography and design categories at the recent New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) convention on Friday and Saturday in Boston, including the coveted prizes of second place for general excellence in advertising and journalism, and best overall niche website for VineyardVisitor.com.
Of the 36 awards received by The Times, 12 were first-place awards. The Times ad sales, production, and design department won five of those: Newspaper-Designed Ad Insert (for the annual Fall for the Arts insert); Themed Multiple Advertiser Pages (for which the paper won first, second, and third prizes, for the Summer Camps section, Holiday Happenings, and Meet Your Merchant, respectively); Advertiser Promotion for Special Section (ads promoting The Local); Best Idea for Generating Ad Revenue (for The Local’s “Made on MVY” section); and Themed Multiple Ad Pages for a Niche Publication (The Local). The advertising team also won five second-place awards (including Advertising General Excellence, bested only by Vermont’s Seven Days).
The journalism department also won five first places, which included: Transportation Reporting (Barry Stringfellow) for his story “The ups and downs of Martha’s Vineyard’s bridge tenders;” Photo Illustration for Kristofer’s Rabasca’s work to accompany “A year in the life of a copy editor,” by Barbara Davis; Best Living Section for The Times’ Community section; best overall design and presentation for Martha’s Vineyard Arts & Ideas Magazine (of which judges said in their notes, “In fact, it may be the best publication in all design categories of the NENPA contest this year”); and Best Overall Niche Website for VineyardVisitor.com.
As with advertising, The Times editorial side won some important second-place prizes as well, including second in Best Overall Design and Presentation for the newspaper, and second in General Excellence (coming in behind Seven Days for both of these). Geoff Currier’s “Business Page,” which runs every other week and is sponsored by the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank, also received a second place prize. Times contributing editor Kate Feiffer garnered two second-place prizes, for Illustration and Infographic (for Arts & Ideas), and Brazilian columnist Juliana Germani received an important award in racial or ethnic reporting for her profile of how Leandro Miranda, a jailed Brazilian man facing deportation, sought opportunity on Martha’s Vineyard (“Leandro Mirando followed opportunity and family to Martha’s Vineyard”). Former Times photo editor Sam Moore received three prizes for work in The Times and MV Arts & Ideas. In total, The Times won 19 second- and third-place prizes in editorial.
The Times competed in NENPA’s “Better Newspaper Competition” in the Weekly Class 2 category, which includes papers with circulations above 6,000, a category that the Vineyard Gazette also competes in, and in which the Gazette was awarded numerous prizes. NENPA received more than 3,000 entries for the contest.
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