Columbian staff members won 11 awards, including four first-place awards, in this year’s Region 10 Excellence in Journalism contest sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists.
The contest recognized work done by print, broadcast and online journalists in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. This year, The Columbian won third place for General Excellence in the “very large” newspaper category against The Seattle Times, The Oregonian and the rest of the region’s largest news organizations.
First-place individual awards went to Editor Lou Brancaccio for his Press Talk column, Susan Abe for print headline writing, Patty Hastings for social issues reporting and Ariane Kunze for online feature video.
Carl Dubois won second place for print headline writing; photojournalist Amanda Cowan took third place in both sports feature and general news photography; Jennifer Krieger won third place for page design; and Craig Brown took third place for editorial writing.
In the Small Daily Print and Online category, Columbian reporter Andy Matarrese won third place in general news reporting for work at his former employer, the Ellensburg Daily Record.
The awards were announced Saturday night at a banquet at Seattle’s Hyatt Olive 8 hotel.