Page 9

Better Newspaper Competition Award Presentations and Photos from March 23

It takes highly skilled, passionate, and determined individuals to create high-quality publications. Every year, the New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) recognizes the accomplishments of the best newspaper professionals in New England through the Better Newspaper Competition, which is the largest and most comprehensive journalism recognition program in the region.

The winners of the 2023 competition were announced, and the awards were presented during a celebratory banquet on March 23, 2024. Please browse the files below to see the results of the contest.

Thank you to everyone for the work you do, and congratulations to all of the winners!

If you are looking for photos from the awards banquet they can be found at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/fc640jqv2v82kp19i0hvw/h?rlkey=ifiabmpj6iboenwq7ftgfvtng&dl=0

Antonia Noori Farzan

| CONVENTION HOME | REGISTRATION | PROGRAM | SPEAKERS | SPONSORS | HOTEL RESERVATIONS |

Antonia Noori Farzan is a Rhode Island native who joined The Providence Journal in 2021. She previously worked at The Washington Post and, before that, spent several years at alt-weeklies in Arizona and Florida. Antonia is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Hamilton College.

Justin Silverman

| CONVENTION HOME | REGISTRATION | PROGRAM | SPEAKERS | SPONSORS | HOTEL RESERVATIONS |

Justin Silverman is executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition. A Massachusetts-based attorney, Justin helps lead NEFAC’s First Amendment and open government advocacy throughout the six-state region.

Justin’s commentary has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, Washington Post and The Boston Globe. He is a former journalist and publisher. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Maine School of Law and New England Law | Boston.

Justin graduated from Suffolk University Law School in 2011. While a student, he worked as a full-time law clerk at the Boston firm Prince Lobel & Tye, LLP. At the firm, he worked directly with the lead counsel of what would become a $24 million arbitration case involving the insufficient payment of commissions to financial advisor co-claimants.

As a law student, Justin frequently contributed to the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard Law School‘s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He interned there during his third year of law school, writing about media law and technology.

Learn more

Ethan Genter

Photo credit Ray Ewing

| CONVENTION HOME | REGISTRATION | PROGRAM | SPEAKERS | SPONSORS | HOTEL RESERVATIONS |

Photo credit Ray Ewing

Ethan Genter is the news editor at the Vineyard Gazette. He has covered local government, the fishing industry, and tourism in coastal New England since 2014.

Michael Gagne

| CONVENTION HOME | REGISTRATION | PROGRAM | SPEAKERS | SPONSORS | HOTEL RESERVATIONS |

Michael Gagne is a native of Woonsocket, R.I., who has been covering local government and education since 2012 in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Michael currently covers local government in the city of Danbury and the town of Brookfield in Connecticut for The News-Times/Hearst Connecticut Media. Before that, Michael was a reporter with the Record-Journal in Meriden, covering breaking news, local government, elections and schools, as well as pursuing enterprise stories. Michael was also a reporter for the Republican-American in Waterbury, as well as the Herald-News in Fall River, Mass. Michael studied journalism and political science at the University of Rhode Island.

Christopher Wheelock

Sun Journal business reporter, Chris Wheelock

| CONVENTION HOME | REGISTRATION | PROGRAM | SPEAKERS | SPONSORS | HOTEL RESERVATIONS |

Sun Journal business reporter, Chris Wheelock

A long-time journalist, Christopher Wheelock got his start with Armed Forces Radio & Television after college. Seventeen years at CNN International brought exposure to major national and international stories, from 9/11 and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to natural disasters like the 2004 Asia tsunami and earthquake. Christopher’s local news experience includes stops in Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. His print and digital experience includes business writing and photography in Michigan. Business has always held a special place in his heart, as a former business owner and senior writer for one of CNNI’s top business anchors. He’s proudly married to a Michigander, loves cooking, anything outdoors and a fat stray. He and his wife are very happy to have made Maine their home.

Chris Larabee

| CONVENTION HOME | REGISTRATION | PROGRAM | SPEAKERS | SPONSORS | HOTEL RESERVATIONS |

Chris Larabee has been a reporter with the Greenfield Recorder since mid-2021, where he covers the south Franklin County towns of Conway, Deerfield, Sunderland and Whately with a focus on community news. His reporting interests include the environment, science and the deep history of Franklin County, particularly in Deerfield. After graduating from Boston University, he joined the Recorder, where he has learned more about farms and culverts than he ever thought he would.

Noah R. Bombard

| CONVENTION HOME | REGISTRATION | PROGRAM | SPEAKERS | SPONSORS | HOTEL RESERVATIONS |

Noah R. Bombard is the communications director for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. Prior to that, he had a 26-year career in journalism, working as an editor and writer for various Massachusetts media outlets.

Bombard was most recently the senior managing editor of news at MassLive and was instrumental in helping to grow the outlet from a Western Mass.-based news site to a statewide operation with reporters in Springfield, Worcester and Boston.

Bombard started his journalism career as a reporter at The Item in Clinton in 1997 before joining Community Newspaper Company, where he served as managing editor of the company’s Northwest Unit, a group of 22 weekly newspapers. He went on to serve as editor-in-chief of Worcester Magazine before switching his focus to digital journalism as social media and web editor at the Eagle-Tribune and then digital editor at the Telegram & Gazette. He joined MassLive in 2014.

Bombard’s past recognitions at NENPA include being named 2004 serious columnist of the year (weekly division) as well as first place awards for a 2006 social issues feature story and a 2004 special award for coverage of a plan to close a veterans hospital in Bedford. He was editor of the Times & Courier when it was named 2006 newspaper of the year (weekly division). Bombard was also part of a team that won a 2013 Right to Know award from the New England Associated Press News Executives Association for a story exposing violations of the state’s public records laws.

He lives in Clinton, Mass.

 

Applications open for NH High School Student Journalism Award

The Brodsky Prize was established seven years ago by the late Jeffrey Brodsky and his father, Howard, to encourage innovation by student journalists. The $5,000 Prize is open to all high school students attending public, charter, or parochial schools in New Hampshire.

Judging criteria include a student’s journalistic initiative and enterprise, as well as what Jeffrey Brodsky called “a contrarian nature and out-of-the-box thinking.”  

The deadline for applications is Saturday, April 20, 2024, at midnight.

Jeffrey Brodsky said of student journalism, “Working on the school newspaper was the most formative and meaningful high school experience for me — more than any classroom. It’s more important than ever for young journalists to push boundaries and to challenge authority, and they can start by using the power of their school paper just like the press in the professional world.” 

The Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications, helps oversee the award program and provides one of the judges, Executive Director Laura Simoes. Longtime judges are Howard Brodsky, Jeffrey’s father, and Co-founder & Chairman of CCA Global Partners; Misbah Tahir, former Little Green co-editor, now a biotechnology finance executive; former NH Union Leader and Sunday News president and publisher Joseph McQuaid, and Leah Todd Lin, VP of Audience Strategy for NH Public Radio.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS:

Please respond to the following questions in essay format (up to 1000 words each).

  • How will new media technologies change the future of news and information? What role have you played or could you play in that change?

  • Solutions Journalism means rigorous reporting of responses to problems. How could you apply a Solutions Journalism approach to covering news in your community? (Learn more at https://loebschool.org/solutions-journalism-lab).

Please tell us how you would use The Brodsky Prize award to further your journalistic studies or efforts (up to 200 words).

Please submit three examples of your student journalism work, with at least two examples having been published in a school-run publication, having been used as part of your school’s communications, or printed/broadcast by a local news outlet.

More information on The Brodsky Prize, including past winners and the application, is available at thebrodskyprize.org.

Rich Saltzberg

| CONVENTION HOME | REGISTRATION | PROGRAM | SPEAKERS | SPONSORS | HOTEL RESERVATIONS |

Rich Saltzberg is a freelance journalist who works in regional planning in Dukes County. He is a former reporter for the Martha’s Vineyard Times. Saltzberg is a two-time NENPA Reporter of the Year and a three-time first-place winner of the NENPA Right-To-Know award.

1...8910...162Page 9 of 162
© 2022 New England Newspaper & Press Association. All rights reserved.