The Merced Sun-Star wins General Excellence award in statewide contest
The Merced Sun-Star captured nine awards Saturday in the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s annual Better Newspapers Contest, including the prestigious General Excellence award, naming it the best daily newspaper in the state in 2016 in its circulation category.
The Sun-Star has been a finalist in the General Excellence category for three consecutive years, taking home the top prize twice during that stretch.
“A paper built on news, with a focus on fact-finding and accountability on its news and opinion pages, presented in a clean, confident design,” the CNPA judges said.
Joe Kieta, editor of the Sun-Star and its sister paper, The Modesto Bee, praised the newsroom staff.
“These awards from our peers in the news industry are certainly flattering and an affirmation of the hard work and dedication of Sun-Star journalists,” Kieta said.
In addition to the top General Excellence prize, the Sun-Star’s newsroom staff received first place for Breaking News for its coverage of a deadly predawn bus crash on Highway 99 near Livingston in August.
The Sun-Star’s Monica Velez won first place in the Enterprise reporting category for her work exploring the overall lack of access to health care options for Merced County resident.
The paper’s Opinion Page Editor, Mike Dunbar, also collected a first-place prize in the Editorial Comment category for a piece on the fallout of a public corruption probe involving the Los Banos school board that resulted in two arrests.
Thaddeus Miller won a second place prize for Education Coverage for a series of stories he reported on a controversy involving a Merced College administrator, some of its employees and board members and the Merced County Sheriff’s Office. Miller dug up documents showing college administrators hired a private investigator to collect fingerprints to trace a letter that criticized them; a claim that, before Miller’s reporting, the college had denied.
Dunbar also received an Editorial Comment Honorable Mention for a piece he wrote in connection with the same issues at the college.
Sun-Star Sports reporters Shawn Jansen and Sean Lynch and photographer Andrew Kuhn won a second-place prize for their work on the Special Sports Section covering Merced County high school football in 2016.
Rob Parsons also received second place in feature writing for a story on the 10-year anniversary of the unsolved slayings of Bill and Lena Chapman.
This story was originally published May 21, 2017 at 10:08 AM with the headline "The Merced Sun-Star wins General Excellence award in statewide contest."