The County Post West won five awards at the annual convention of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association in Madison Friday, Feb. 1.
Daily and weekly newspapers from across the state competed in the 2012 Better Newspaper Contest.
Judges reviewed more than 3,000 entries from 126 papers.
Eligible entries were published between Sept. 1, 2011, and Aug. 31, 2012.
The County Post West competed in the category of largest weekly newspapers.
Robert Cloud won a second-place award for local government reporting.
His entries included “Protecting vulnerable adults” (Feb. 2, 2012), “County must pay deputy $141,640 for discrimination” (May 3, 2012) and Nurses stressed by overtime” (July 26, 2012).
“These stories provided good context on an interesting array of topics,” the judges said of Cloud’s articles.
Cloud and Angie Landsverk won a second-place award in enterprise/interpretive reporting for their joint effort on a series about poverty in Waupaca County.
The series ran in December 2011 and included articles about rising poverty in the schools, homeless children and the growing need for assistance from food pantries.
Landsverk won a third-place award for reporting on local education.
Her entries included “More time for open enrollment” (Feb. 9, 2012), “Local twins choose different schools” (Feb. 16, 2012) and “Breaking down the numbers” (April 4, 2012).
The judges described Landsverk’s articles as “good clear writing on topics that can be confusing. . . Good job!”
Greg Seubert won a second-place award for his sports pages.
“Overall layout solid,” the judges said regarding the sports section. “Easy for reader to read and follow the flow. Creativity with headlines for photo illustration looks solid. . . This paper can be proud of the way their sports pages look.”
The County Post West also won a first-place award for Best Online Advertising-Single Ad-Static.
The Stormin’ Norman ad which appears on WaupacaNow received top honors.
At the County Post East, Bert Lehman won a third-place award for his sports column on area racing, Full Throttle.