The Sun took home two first place awards for its community reporting in the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s 2015 Better Newspapers Contest. The awards were announced during a press summit in San Francisco April 30.
Sun Editor Shelly Cone’s piece “Life on alert” (Oct. 14, 2015) won first place for Best Profile Feature. The story was a look at the day-to-day lives of undocumented immigrants who say they live in constant fear of deportation tearing their families apart. Staff Writer David Minsky contributed to that report.
Executive Editor Camillia Lanham won first place for Environmental Reporting for her piece “Nitrogen and water” (Dec. 30, 2014). The story looks at how the agriculture industry worked to come to terms with regulations that forced them to mitigate the nitrate concentrations in groundwater.
The Sun also earned a third or fourth place for Local Government Coverage for Staff Writer David Minsky’s story “Code conundrum” (Aug. 3, 2015). That piece took a look at a home owner’s fight to keep his home after the city of Lompoc found him in violation of city codes. Final placement announcement for third and fourth place winners had not been made as of press time.
In addition to those awards, the Sun’s sister paper New Times received a second place award for agricultural reporting for Lanham’s story, “Vines by nature” (May 20, 2015). The story outlined the different styles of dry-farming used by growers at vineyards in places like New Cuyama, Los Olivos, and Paso Robles.
New Times staff writers also received third or fourth place in the following categories: Environmental Reporting for Jono Kinkade’s “Cutting down catastrophe” (Aug. 19, 2015); Education Coverage for Chris McGuiness’ piece “Pushing transition” (Oct. 14, 2015); Investigative Reporting for “Airing out concerns” by Colin Rigley (Feb. 11, 2015); and Enterprise News Story or Series for Rigley’s “Hello my name is ” (Jan. 21, 2015).
This article appears in May 5-12, 2016.