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Thanks, it’s nice to be recognized

By Staff | Feb 2, 2014

You will have to excuse me again this year as I toot my own horn.

Well, not my horn exactly. The horn I want to toot belongs to the entire talented staff here at the Faribault County Register.

As noted elsewhere in the issue, the Register received some very nice recognition at the Better Newspaper Contest awards banquet at the Minnesota Newspaper Association Annual Convention last week in Bloomington.

The Register was recognized with seven awards. I believe seven may be the most the newspaper has received in one year, ever.

I think it is nice that we received awards in a variety of newspaper categories, including writing, photography and advertising.

Of special significance to us, is the second place award to Our Heroes for Best Magazine.

First off, it is truly a group effort, with all of the staff having a hand in its creation.

Secondly, the competition for this award is among all weekly newspapers in the state, so it is difficult to win.

I should note again that because of the way the contest is structured, we won for the Our Heroes magazine that came out in November of 2012, not the one we recently published in November of 2013.

We will enter that one in next year’s contest.

This is the third year in a row the Register has received a second place award for the magazine. I think we are going to try hard and grab that first place award next year.

We have received a first place for Our Heroes in the past, but it was quite some time ago. In all, the Register has been honored seven times for the magazine over the 10 years of its existence.

I want to offer congratulations and a hearty thanks for the hard work to all my fellow staff members.

But, a special note goes to Kristin Woodwick for winning an advertising award, Kevin Mertens for a photography award, and Lacey Sawatzky for a writing award.

This is not Kristin’s first win; our crack advertising and graphic artists have often been recognized in the past.

And for the second consecutive year, our group was recognized with a first place award for Advertising Excellence. Wow!

Our ace photographer, Kevin Mertens, has won in the past, as well. Surprisingly, Kevin did not win for a sports photo, but instead in the Portrait and Personality Photo category.

I’m very proud of our relatively new reporter, Lacey Sawatzky, for picking up a first place award in the Best Arts and Entertainment Story category.

She beat out some tough competition including yours truly. Yes, that is correct; she beat the boss.

Between the two of us we swept that category of the contest. She took first place and I grabbed both second and third place. Sweeping a category is a rare feat.

I found it quite ironic that the stories I won with were about things which didn’t exactly happen as told in the story.

A feature story about the making of the masks for ‘Shrek, The Musical’ was awarded second place.

Actually one of the masks made for Princess Fiona, was never used. The other one, for Shrek, was cut up and only some of it was used.

My other story, which was awarded third place, had to do with a former Winnebago resident bringing Merrill Osmond of the Osmond Brothers, to Blue Earth for a concert at the fairgrounds.

As most folks know, that concert was cancelled and never did happen.

Oops. It drips with irony, doesn’t it?