State press awards make you wonder

The North Carolina Press Association's annual awards, announced Thursday night, provide an interesting contrast. Each year, the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer, the two largest papers in the state (now both owned by McClatchy, whose stock is trading at less than $1), battle for the most awards in their circulation class and for the General Excellence Award. Neither won the award this year. General Excellence went to the Greensboro News & Record. Greensboro? I'm not the only journalist, or former journalist, to be surprised by that award. One award winner told me that, if he were a Greensboro staffer, he would have grabbed the award and skedaddled back to Greensboro as fast as he could before anyone discovered that a mistake had been made. The Winston-Salem Journal took second place, and the Fayetteville Observer took third. In other words, neither Charlotte nor Raleigh placed. Fayetteville is a class newspaper that regularly betters Raleigh and Charlotte in looks, organization and day-to-day news, but on a smaller scale (it's near the bottom of the 35,000-plus circulation category). It also puts out a better paper than the first- or second-place winners.

While Greensboro N&R won its odd General Excellence award, a Wilson Daily Times staffer, Matt Shaw, won a third-place enterprise reporting award for a series of stories that transpired under Greensboro's nose. Shaw's award-winning coverage was about the legislative effort to shut White's Tire of Wilson out of the state's retread contract bidding. That effort was ultimately successful, rewarding tire dealers in the Greensboro area, but the N&R never covered the issue in any depth and never questioned area representatives' claim that they wanted to make the bid process fairer. If banning the Wilson company that had held the state contract for two decades and had won loyalty raves from customers across the state is fairer, then that's what they got. The metro papers that have Raleigh bureaus ignored this issue, and Shaw deserves his award for airing the facts. Too bad other papers didn't take notice.

State press awards, to be fair and honest, are often a hodgepodge. The year the Charlotte Observer finished second in the Pulitzer competition, its story on brown lung didn't win the state press contest. These contests are judged by fellow journalists from other states, but the quality of judging varies widely. The biggest, most prestigious contests, such as the Pulitzer, are judged by juries of selected judges, not by one individual, as in state contests. Some state contest judges are probably well-experienced and have high standards. Others are relative neophytes who don't always differentiate between great journalism and breathless prose. Each of the more than 30 years I participated in these contests, I have wondered why one story one and another didn't. I often felt that my paper's best efforts didn't win while its less outstanding entries did. Prejudice also can play a part. I always felt that the Daily Times' "Withering of the Golden Leaf" series about tobacco's decline, which won a national award, failed to win in the state because a judge didn't care about tobacco or want to read about it.

I end my years of entering state press contests with 21 N.C. Press awards during my years at The Wilson Daily Times. I won at least one state press award each year from 1991 to 2008 with the exceptions of 2003 and 2005. I also won 11 state awards while with the Hamlet News and list a total of 38 writing awards on my resume.

In the end, the awards don't really matter. They didn't insure against my being laid off, and no one (even I) remember what the winning entries were. The folks at the Greensboro N&R should remember that their award is ephemeral and won't earn them any tangible benefits.