Virginia Gazette writers won eight awards in the annual Virginia Press Association contest, including a first-place award for Frank Shatz, who has been writing a weekly column for more than 40 years.
The awards were among more than 70 won in news and advertising by The Virginian-Pilot, Daily Press, Inside Business, Tidewater Review and other Virginia Media papers. The announcement came during VPA’s awards banquet, which capped off its annual conference in Charlottesville on Saturday.
Virginia Media newspapers, including the Gazette, won more than 30 first-place awards in their divisions for stories published last year.
Shatz, 98, won first place for a selection of his World Focus columns, including one about the history of his family, which for generations lived in a border town between Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Shatz survived the Holocaust after surviving a Hungarian slave labor camp, later joining an anti-Nazi underground organization.
He and his late wife immigrated to the United States in 1958, eventually settling in Williamsburg. VPA judges praised Shatz’s columns for putting “a local identity on issues of global importance.”
Another first-place award went to former staff writer Sian Wilkerson in the feature writing category for her story about an Afghan interpreter and his children who escaped their home country and settled in Williamsburg. Wilkerson also won second place for her feature writing portfolio, which included a story on the giant heads of presidents that were once a park.
Correspondent Alison Johnson won a first-place award in the health, science and environmental writing category. Her three-story portfolio included a story on a new high-risk breast screening program at Sentara Health and a story about a mom who started a gluten-free doughnut business in response to her son’s allergies.
Correspondent Wilford Kale won three awards, including second place in the general news category for his coverage of the discovery of a mass grave in Colonial Williamsburg. He won two third-place awards — in critical writing for his Kale on Books book review columns and in feature story writing for his story about the last Vietnam POW who made a stop in Williamsburg as part of his homecoming.
Another Gazette columnist, Laura D. Hill, won second place for her Building a Bigger Table columns, which look at inclusion, relationships and racial healing and reconciliation issues in the community. Judges called her columns “an interesting concept” that “shows action rather than simply words.”
Sister paper The Virginian Pilot, whose stories sometimes appear in the Gazette, won the grand prize sweepstakes award for overall excellence in news and advertising among daily newspapers. Veteran reporter Peter Dujardin was awarded Journalist of the Year and military reporter Caitlyn Burchett earned Best of Show for daily writing.
“Our newsrooms did an amazing job covering local news last year,” said Kris Worrell, editor-in-chief of Virginia Media. “To be recognized in every category, from writing, page design, photography, digital journalism and advertising, just shows how we continue to excel as a team.”
For a complete list of Virginia Media’s awards, visit bit.ly/3UzASS7.
Kim O’Brien Root, kimberly.root@virginiamedia.com
