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Better Newspaper Competition Top Award Winners Celebrated During 2023 New England Newspaper Convention!

Thank you again to those that participated in the New England Better Newspaper Competition! The competition was quite strong and included 2,000 entries this year.

Notifications of award winners were sent a few weeks ago. If you have any questions, please contact Linda Conway at l.conway@nenpa.com.

The awards will be presented at the Awards Banquet during the 2023 New England Newspaper Convention on May 6. The Convention will take place May 1-6, 2023. We look forward to learning, networking with friends and colleagues, and celebrating with our Top Winners!

Photojournalist of the Year

Marc Vasconcellos
The Enterprise
Gannett New England

Rookie of the Year – Weekly Newspapers

Calli Remillard
The Falmouth Enterprise

College Rising Star

Bella Ramirez
Boston University

Reporter of the Year

Rich Saltzberg
The Martha’s Vineyard Times

Rookie of the Year – Daily Newspapers

Namu Sampath
The Enterprise
Gannett New England

Top College Journalist

Colbi Edmonds
Boston University

Congratulatory ads recognizing your staff, the top winners, Hall of Fame inductees, and Yankee Quill recipients are available in the Awards Banquet program book for a reduced rate of $125 for an inside page. We can design your ad for a small fee of $50. Follow this link for more information and to reserve your ad spot.

Tickets are available to attend the Awards Banquet on Saturday evening, May 6, but registration will close soon. These tickets are $95 per person, and tables can be reserved for groups of eight or more.

Registration is still open for the Convention. Individual member registration is only $109 per person to attend virtual and in-person sessions. Companies can register a group of five or more (or your whole staff!) to attend sessions for only $525.

The program includes top-notch speakers addressing the most critical issues facing our industry today. Live virtual sessions are scheduled each day from May 1-4, and live in-person sessions are on May 6. Speaker bios and session times have been added to the program.

Reserve your hotel rooms today! The reduced NENPA rate of $149/night expires on April 21.

Below are links to check out the program and our spectacular lineup of speakers, make hotel reservations, and register for the Convention, Awards Banquet, Hall of Fame Dinner, and Yankee Quill Luncheon.

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Gregory V. Sullivan

Gregory V. Sullivan has served as General Counsel for the Union Leader Corporation for the past 34 years. He also currently serves on the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s Committee on the Judiciary and the Media, as well as the Committee for Public Access to Courts, and is President of the Hingham, Mass.-based media law firm, Malloy & Sullivan.

Mr. Sullivan has argued before the New Hampshire Supreme Court in several landmark First Amendment and public access cases. Recently, he appeared with media and First Amendment experts on a special “New Media” television segment for WSBE, Rhode Island’s PBS station. He is also an instructor at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications in Manchester, N.H. and a faculty member of Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Mass, where he teaches First Amendment and media law.

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Nina Sachdev

Nina Sachdev brings more than 20 years of journalism, news editing and marketing experience to her role as a communications director for Media Impact Funders (MIF). Nina served as MIF’s communications director for more than five years before joining the Rita Allen Foundation to lead communications there. After a brief stint, Nina re-joined MIF in February 2022. Nina cut her teeth in journalism at The Dallas Morning News, where—as an intern on the copy desk—she was tasked with editing the obituaries of famous people who hadn’t yet died. Since then, Nina has worked at The Santa Rosa Press DemocratThe Philadelphia Daily News and The Philadelphia Weekly in almost every editorial capacity imaginable, including senior editor, A1 editor (when that used to be a thing) and slot (does anyone remember that being a thing?). Nina is the creator and editor of the award-winning The Survivors Project: Telling the Truth About Life After Sexual Abuse, which exposes the reality of healing from the effects of sexual abuse. Nina holds an M.A. in journalism from Temple University. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

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Steve Leone

Steve Leone joined the Monitor as editor in April of 2014 and served through 2020, when he became publisher and vice president of news for the Newspapers of New England. He’s worked for the Newport Daily News in Newport, RI, the News & Advance in Lynchburg, Va., the Portland Press Herald in Portland, Maine, the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif., and most recently was the editor of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in Peterborough. He lives in Concord with his wife and two children.

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Leah Todd

Leah Todd is the New England regional manager for the Solutions Journalism Network, building relationships with newsrooms in the New England states. From 2015 to 2018, Leah led SJN’s work in the Intermountain West, including launching and overseeing collaborative journalism projects between dozens of news organizations in Montana and New Mexico. Previously, she covered K-12 education at The Seattle Times, and local government at the Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune. She has investigated and written about turmoil in Washington state’s new charter school sector; efforts to improve disproportionately high absentee rates among Native American students in Wyoming; Colorado’s attempts to divert mental health patients from overcrowded Emergency Rooms; and how residents in rural communities across the West find and use local news.

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Melanie Plenda

Melanie Plenda is a member of the NENPA Board of Directors and an award-winning freelance journalist and the Director of The Granite State News Collaborative. Her role with The Collaborative includes coordinating coverage for the group’s editorial projects, building partnerships and handling the day to day operations of the organization. Melanie’s freelance work has appeared in a variety of regional and national publications including The Atlantic.com, The Daily Beast, and The Washington Post. Melanie is based in New Hampshire.

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Angie Drobnic Holan

Angie Drobnic Holan is the editor-in-chief of PolitiFact. She has extensive experience fact-checking the presidency, Congress and political campaigns, and was a reporter on the PolitiFact team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She serves on the advisory board of the International Fact-Checking Network.

She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a master’s of library science from the University of South Florida. Her undergraduate degree is from the Plan II liberal arts program at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a native of Louisiana and attended the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts.

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Joy Mayer

Joy Mayer founded Trusting News in 2016 after a 20-year career in newsrooms and teaching. She spent 12 years at the Missouri School of Journalism, where she created an audience engagement curriculum and a community outreach team in the newsroom of the Columbia Missourian and also taught web design and print design. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, and can be reached at joy@TrustingNews.org or on Twitter @mayerjoy.

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Darrell Davis

Darrell Davis is the Vice President of Creative Services for Metro Creative Graphics, Inc. With more than 30 years of experience in media and advertising, Darrell leads a team of art directors, designers and copywriters in producing creative content to help newspapers and their local advertisers thrive.

Darrell attended Syracuse University and earned a BFA in Graphic Design at Binghamton University. He also studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he remains a resident and ardent observer of evolving design and advertising trends.

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