Daily Sun staffers honored by NH Press Association

LACONIA — The New Hampshire Press Association honored five staffers of The Laconia Daily Sun last week with awards for support of the First Amendment, community service reporting, spot news reporting, and outstanding graphics design.

The awards, which covered stories published in 2019, were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and were conducted virtually.

The Daily Sun was a second-place finisher for championing the First Amendment with a series of articles by reporter Rick Green and an editorial that advocated for more openness in Laconia City government. Unlike most other awards that were divided into classes based on circulation, the First Amendment category was all-encompassing.

The journalist who judged the category wrote: "Great job investigating these issues and allowing the reader to draw their own opinions. I felt the article about the city buying two parcels of land was a particularly good example of this paper serving as a 'watchdog' in their community since it shed light on what could be a future issue of not releasing minutes from non-public meetings quickly enough. This entry I chose as my second place selection because of not only the initiative this reporter and newspaper took but also the way the information was presented. There was something fishy going in both cases and this newspaper put boots on the ground to get to the bottom but in both cases there were two side of the story. Rather than choose a side and present a biased article Mr. Green took an extra step in adding 'Pros and Cons' to both issues.”

In the category of spot news reporting, staff writers Adam Drapcho and Michael Mortensen received the second-place award for their story, "Two friends killed when boats collide," about a tragedy that took the lives of longtime close friends Jim Hanson and Harold "Hal" Lyon.

“You rarely read a tragedy story this personal," the judge wrote. "The reader felt for the community there, and the magnitude of the loss. Very nicely done.”

In the category of community service, staff writer Roberta Baker won second and third place for two stories that were part of The Sunshine Project underwritten by grants from the Endowment for Health and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

The story that finished second was "Combating anti-Semitism," an in-depth look at the issue that included discussions with members of local Temple B’Nai Israel, which adopted safety and emergency protocols with police assistance.

The third place award Baker earned was for a series that looked at workers with disabilities, focusing on a man who rose above an intellectual disability to live independently, become a longtime and reliable restaurant worker and a trainer of other employees. Baker also won a second-place award for business and economic reporting for a story she did prior to joining The Daily Sun.

Graphic designer Janis Carroll captured second place in the category of Graphic-Cartoon-Illustration for her front page design, "Snow, man" that ran in January 2019. “Nice illustration that works with the story content,” the judge wrote.

"Every member of our newsroom was honored by the NHPA in some exceptionally competitive categories,"  Managing Editor Roger Carroll said. "I think that says a lot about the caliber of our team and their ability to report on a broad range of topics that serve the public interest."