L&T staff report
Another contest season has come and gone, and the Leader & Times once again came out strong.
The publication ended up with six 1st place finishes, 11 2nd place finishes, and 17 3rd place finishes for a total of 34 awards, and L&T Publisher Earl Watt said he is proud of the results.
“It was another strong year for the L&T. Competitively, it came down between us and the Harvey County Now, who edged us out this year with the Sweepstakes Award after we edged them out last year. They’re a good group and put together a strong paper that’s really well-respected, so there’s no shame in coming in second to them,” Watt said. “It’s always great being able to go to contest and meet with other journalists across Kansas and visit with them, and this year was another strong year for Kansas journalism, and we’re proud to be part of that. Something that was different compared to years past was our digital delivery, which is getting a lot of recognition. We got first place for video journalism, first place for best Web site, first place for best video project with ‘The Ride Home’ during football season, which a lot of people enjoy watching. The inroads we’re making as far as the transitions to adding and enhancing the delivery of our information is really good. I was a presenter at contest this year to talk about what we do digitally, and there’s been a lot of interest in that across the state, so I’ll be interested to see what other publications do as far as their digital footprint. Seeing what the staff does overall and seeing them get recognized is great – it’s not a one-man or two-man show, it’s a whole staff working to get the news out to the community, and it’s great seeing that recognized. We’re always talking about how we can improve on our writing and layout, and we’re always pushing ourselves because we know we can always do better. I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, and I’m looking forward to being able to continue that. Every paper is working to tell the story of their community in the best way, so why shouldn’t we be able to do it better with Liberal?”
“This year’s winners for me in the KPA contest, for the most part, hold great places in my heart. Getting second for my photo package on the Living page, ‘The call the thing RODEO’ and third for sports photo with the ‘buckin’ bronc’ photo was great, and it shows judges still have a thing for rodeo,” L&T reporter Robert Pierce said. “I had a feeling rodeo had lost appeal with the judges for a couple of years when I didn’t get any awards, but I came back this year with a couple of winners, including my first place religion story, ‘Shoebox changes Rosario’s life.’ Every year, our area Operation Christmas Child chapter hosts a project leader workshop in September or October. Normally, they bring in an adult who, as a child, received a shoebox from the charity. Normally, I just do an interview with the person, take a few pictures of them talking at the workshop, and that’s that. This year, I spoke with Anabel Rosario, who grew up in the Dominican Republic and received an OCC shoebox as a child. This year, there was a bit more of a connection than normal, as Anabel and I exchanged phone numbers, and we plan to stay in touch. That has never happened to me before, and I am grateful the KPA judges saw the value of the story and gave it a first in religion story. My second place youth story, ‘Robotics introduces technology, competition for Neon Knights,’ likewise was a great one for me. The Neon Knights is a homeschooled robotics team, something I had never seen in my years of covering robotics, and after talking to Kathy Harris and her son, Eli, about the team, I felt the story was a winner for sure. My third place investigative story, ‘Required letters on tax increase were ‘worst case scenario’’ was a bit of a surprise, not that it finished third, but that it got anything at all. I had interviewed our county administrator, April Warden, about letters that had been sent out to landowners in the county touting a mill levy increase of about 8 mills or so I think, and of course, landowners were furious. April, however, helped me put their minds at ease somewhat, but I hesitated entering this story. I did so because I did not have much in the way of investigative stories to enter, but sometimes, you are your own worst critic, and things turn out better than you planned.”
“I admit I wasn’t entirely happy about how this year’s results went for me, and there were a few submissions I wish would have gotten recognized, but I also know the competition can be extremely stiff,” fellow L&T reporter Elly Grimm added. “Overall though, I feel like I still had a pretty solid year in terms of the stories and pictures I had in the paper, so I can feel good about at least that. I’m still chasing that elusive first place in column writing for my Spotlight page columns and I know one of these years that plaque will be mine. If I keep pushing myself for the rest of this year, maybe I’ll get some extra hardware the next time around.”
Like with every contest, there were some surprises.
“The video/online projects doing so well really surprised me, half of our first place finishes were for those projects. We make an effort to put all of our stories online on our Web site and then share them on our social media as quickly as we can,” Watt said. “That’s been recognized as another added benefit to our readers as far as getting information that way, and the audience we’re building on the digital side shows people are getting our content online and through our social media posts, and we’ll continue to grow that audience. The method of getting information out there might continue to change, but the gathering of that information is still our mission because people want to know what’s going on locally. There are always some neat ideas that come up at the convention, and I can’t say how many we’ll be able to implement at the L&T, but there’s always some brainstorming that goes on. And that lets us open the door more to the public, and we’d love to hear any and all ideas of what they’d like to see us cover more, because we work for them. I like to say we have thousands of bosses because the readers and customers are the ones who we’re informing and keeping in the loop of what’s going on in Liberal.”
“My third place local business story, ‘PINK is the new BLACK for Friday,’ could not have been accomplished without the help of Raquel Arellano from the Seward County Development Corporation. She gave me great information to help me promote their PINK Friday campaign for Black Friday,” Pierce added. “Environmental stories are not usually my specialty, but with Landfill Supervisor Brock Theiner and Hannah Sperfslage, staff professional for SCS Engineers Environmental Consultants and Contractors, I must have done something right. I guess a trash sorting project is something different for an environmental story, and I know that’s what the judges look for – something different. Though I’m never happy when an accident occurs, I was happy when the judges gave me second place in spot news with my story ‘Woman dies in car rollover.’ I noticed one of the notes complimented my work in paying attention to our office police scanner.”
“I was surprised to get recognized in the agricultural story category since I don’t cover that as much as some of the other categories,” Grimm said. “I usually have more of an affinity toward the feature story side, so I was surprised and happy to get recognized there, for sure.”
Watt said there are a few things he would like to see in the future with the L&T.
“Something I’d like to see us do more of is investigative reporting, because there was $15,000 handed out at contest this year for the winner of that category, so that’s another carrot to really try our best to cover those types of stories and be the best at it,” Watt said. “It’s always kind of fun looking at the entries and thinking ‘Oh yeah, I forgot we’d covered that’ and look at some of the coverage we provided, and it’s a good feeling. I’m always really impressed with the work our staff does in the everyday coverage. Being where we are, it might seem we’re detached from the rest of the state, but when we go to convention and see the awards that prove what we’re doing right, it makes me feel proud of what we’re doing and what the staff accomplishes. It’s not easy, there have been a lot of changes in the industry throughout the past few years, which has been tough, but we’re still here to provide that information and cover Liberal at a high level. I’d also like to see us grow our advertising base, we’ve got to reach out to the community and have strong partnerships there, and all of our numbers show we have a strong following and viewership, which means we can deliver for those advertisers. I’d love for the L&T to be a mechanism for local businesses. There’s a lot to accomplish in the coming months, and we’re definitely not going to sit back on our laurels. And we got edged out for the Sweepstakes Award, so I’d love to see just a little more pizazz when it comes to our stories and layout so we can get that honor back next year. And again, that’s not a slight to the guys who won, but I’m competitive, so I’d love to see us bring home the Sweepstakes Award again. I feel like we’re on the right path, and we’ve got to keep going in that direction and pushing forward, and I’d like to thank the community for its support, because all we’re doing is sharing Liberal’s story, i.e. their story.”
Overall, Watt said, it was another solid year for the publication.
“We’ve got more than 60 years of journalism experience total in the newsroom to cover this community, and you don’t see that everywhere,” Watt said. “We’ve shown again and again how we care about our community and keeping everyone informed by going to meetings and events and everything else. We’re here to keep everyone informed about what’s going on, and we’re there for the good, the bad and the ugly, and we’re all committed to help telling Liberal’s story better than anyone else.”
