By David Fleet
947-244-2647
dfleet@mihomepaper.com
Ortonville — The Citizen newspaper was honored with 11 awards in the 2023 Michigan Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest, marking the 15th consecutive year of recognition in the state’s largest journalism competition.
With the new awards announced on March 14, The Citizen has now received 82 MPA awards since 2005. With the number of winning entries by the news staff in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 The Citizen remains a top three finalist for the MPA Newspaper of the Year Award in category B publications.
The Citizen competes in Weekly Class B, among publications with circulation between 7,001-15,000.
This year the Pennsylvania Press Association reviewed 2,849 entries submitted by 89 Michigan newspapers.
The competition inspires all journalists to produce their best work, which in turn, nurtures stronger communities.
“The annual Michigan Press Association Better Newspaper Contest gives our members a chance each year to assess and put forth their team’s best work in journalism, photojournalism, column writing, graphic design and advertising,” said Wes Smith, Michigan Press Association Past-President and Group Publisher of View Newspaper Group.
“After the judges have reviewed the thousands of submissions and made their decisions, awards will be given, bragging rights established and perhaps a few toasts made to the winners,” he said. “It is a rare moment in our profession where we allow ourselves to reflect and experience something akin to satisfaction for a job well done. Anyone in this business today is in it, not for kudos, but because of a passion and desire to serve our readers, our advertisers and our communities. For us the work is the reward. But on the occasion of MPA BNC contest awards, let’s take a moment to say to all our coworkers and all our colleagues — Good job! And to the winners — Congratulations!”
-In the Feature Photo category, Patrick McAbee won first place for “Summer cool down” and third place for “SOS.”
-In the Feature Story category, David Fleet won first place for “A right to be free, a show of resilience, defiance.”
-In the Government/Education News category, Shelby Stewart-Soldan won first place for “Student test results outpacing, state, pre-pandemic scores,” second place for “Sheriff K9 ‘Woody’ taking a bite out of stress,” and Honorable Mention for “Angel Closet: On campus clothing provides students a little help.”
-In News Enterprise Reporting category, Shelby Stewart-Soldan won second place for “Brandon community rallies around abandoned dogs; Reward in abandoned dogs case swells.” David Fleet won third place for “Michigan State: It was chaos all over campus; ‘We called him Prince Charming.’”
-In Sports Writing, David Fleet won first place for “The race across the sky, Leadville Trail 100 Run.”
-Spot News Story category, David Fleet won second place for “Local hunter survives Alaskan bush plane crash,” and third place for “Remembering Queen Elizabeth: ‘She was so gracious.’”
-In Non-Daily-Entertaining Services, Jen Ward and Eric Lewis won first place for the “Boat Bar,” advertisement.