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The Burnet Bulletin won the Sweepstakes Award for Division 9 in the 2019-20 Texas Better Newspaper Contest. Managing editor Lew K. Cohn, far right, accepted the award on behalf of the newspaper during the Texas Press Association annual convention and trade show in Denton on Saturday, June 12. Ken Cooke/Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post
The Burnet Bulletin is being hailed as the top newspaper of its size in the state of Texas following the 141st Texas Press Association Convention & Trade Show, which was held June 10-12 at the Embassy Suites Hilton in Denton.
The Bulletin brought home the coveted 2019-20 Sweepstakes Award, which was given to the highest-scoring newspaper in each circulation classification in the TPA Better Newspapers Contest. The newspaper hit paydirt with eight total category awards in Division 9 for weeklies, including three first places, three seconds, a third and a fourth.
“We have an exceptional news team at the Bulletin and I am proud of the extraordinary work they do of keeping our communities informed,” Bulletin publisher Jeff Shabram said. “The Texas Press Association awards are a testament to the exceptional journalism of Texas area news teams and their ability to shine a light on important community news.
“The Bulletin, under the news leadership of our managing editor, Lew Cohn, continues to be the dominant news and information source for the Highland Lakes and we look forward to our continued service to the Texas Hill Country.”
The Bulletin swept the two Sports categories, taking first place in both Sports Coverage and Sports Photography as the judges raved about the work done by Clear Memories’ Wayne Craig, who supplies the editorial copy and photos for the Bulletin’ sports pages, which are laid out with an eye for detail by Nathan Hendrix, the sports editor for Highland Lakes Newspapers, which includes the Burnet Bulletin.
“Lively section enhanced by excellent use of action photos,” the judges wrote. “Writer covers several sports and finds time to contribute a personal column that adds to the section’s vitality.”
The Bulletin also took top honors in the Feature Photography category with the judges noting the newspapers’ photos were clearly superior to the other newspapers in Division 9. Submissions included photos from the Oatmeal Festival, several BCISD events and the Hill Country Space Expo.
The judges especially loved how Bulletin photographers were able to capture life in the moment without resorting to submitting staged photographs.
“The Burnet Bulletin clearly takes first in this competition! All five submissions were great, but one can’t help but notice that the entire paper is filled with great photos. Great job!” the judges said.
“It has been an honor to judge this competition! Although there was a clear first place winner, there were some great shots in other entries also. One thing I found common in this selection is that a lot of the submitted photos were posed. The best pictures are usually taken when no one knows they are. Keep that in mind for the upcoming year!”
The Bulletin won second place awards for News Writing, Column Writing and Headlines. In the New Writing Category, submissions included coverage of the untimely death and memorial of Burnet police officer Jose Mesa by Connie Swinney and of a rally by concerned citizens against the hiring of a former Cedar Park police chief by Cohn.
“The authors provided crucial context for the stories,” judges wrote.
In Column Writing, a pair of Cohn columns were submitted, including a humorous take on superheroes after the writer was stung by a scorpion and a heartfelt tribute to the Class of 2020 as they graduated during the midst of the pandemic.
“These are both well-written columns. The scorpion superpowers piece was just plain funny, although there was a lot of detail about superheroes. (A reader not familiar with them could have gotten lost.) The graduation piece was the stronger of the two. The Class of 2020 lost a lot. Good writing and good attention to sentence structure and punctuation. Great work,” the judges said.
Headlines submitted included several clever puns, including a play on the name Burnet in a story about winter weather — “Brrr-Net! Winter weather returns.”
“Very good headlines for local people to understand and that is the audience you want to reach. Nice work,” the judges wrote.
The Bulletin also won third place for Feature Writing, including a story by Hendrix about local veteran Ray Bronk’s survival of a mid-air collision during a training exercise. The story was lauded for “solid reporting with good details throughout.”
The lone fourth-place award was for News Photography, but there were no judges comments on submissions in that category.
The 2019-20 Texas Better Newspaper Contest featured 18 categories — the most in the contest’s history. Participating newspapers were invited to submit entries from work published between Sept. 1, 2019 and Aug. 31, 2020. This year, 90 newspapers submitted 934 entries in the contest.
Competitions were divided into divisions in which newspapers competed against publications of similar circulation. As a smaller weekly, The Bulletin competed in Division 9.
Entries were judged by members of the Wisconsin Press Association while Texas Press Association member volunteers judged entries in the Wisconsin Press Contests.
First place winners receive plaques and certificates are awarded in first through fourth places. Sweepstakes points are earned for each division based on point accumulation in the 12 sweepstakes-eligible categories: 100 points for each first-place award, 75 points for each second-place award, 50 points for each third-place award and 25 points for each fourth-place award.
While both the Bulletin and the Gladewater Mirror were tied atop the standings with 600 total points, the Bulletin won the tiebreaker by having more second-place awards. The Mirror, which had nine winning entries, also had three first-place awards, but just two second-place finishes, two thirds and two fourths.
