This article is a staff report from the Valley News, first published Oct. 11, 2014.
The Valley News was recognized as the 2014 New England Newspaper of the Year for both its daily and Sunday editions by the New England Newspaper & Press Association at its annual awards banquet on Thursday.
The press association confers the Newspaper of the Year award based on newspaper circulation, with five such awards for daily newspapers and four for Sunday newspapers. The daily Valley News competed with other papers in the 10,000 to 15,000 circulation category while the Sunday Valley News won the award among newspapers with a circulation up to 20,000.
Different from most newspaper competitions because of its emphasis on readers’ perspective, the contest submits newspapers’ entries for judging to a panel of newspaper readers rather than professionals. Newspapers are required to submit their editions on a day chosen by the press association and another edition of their own choosing for the contest period of June 1, 2013, through May 31, 2014.
“It is an honor to be named New England Newspaper of the Year,” said Dan McClory, publisher of the Valley News. “Our objective is to produce the best newspaper we can. While our ultimate judges are our readers, success in a contest like this is another way of validating that we are fulfilling our mission. This competition is unlike any other in our industry because the winners are selected by a jury panel of newspaper readers. To win the daily and Sunday categories is extraordinary, as no other newspaper in New England can make that claim.”
For the daily competition, Valley News editors chose to submit the July 4, 2013, paper, an edition dominated by news of flash floods in the Upper Valley, particularly along Slayton Hill Road in Lebanon. The Sunday Valley News edition chosen by editors was Nov. 17, 2013, a newspaper that marked the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination with readers’ recollections of that day. Other prominent stories from that edition included a Jim Kenyon column about a Hartford businessman who was puzzled about why the town stopped using his car repair shop for police cruisers, a Business page story comparing how the Affordable Care Act was faring in Vermont and New Hampshire, a sports story about the Stevens High football team beating Epping-Newmarket to earn its first trip to the championship game since 2005, and a Perspectives page piece by Meredith Angwin arguing that the closing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant would ultimately be bad for Vermont.
The readers’ panel judging the entries was instructed to evaluate each newspaper’s relative strength and weakness based on a number of categories, including the quality of reporting and writing, the use of photos, design, digital offerings, the publication’s overall value and general impressions such as whether the newspaper stood out as being special.
“This is an award that the entire organization earned and can be proud of,” McClory said.
