Newspaper publishers, editors, writers, and designers won top awards Thursday in the Tennessee Press Association’s 2019 newspaper contest cosponsored by UT.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Johnson City Press, the Leaf-Chronicle (Clarksville), the Hendersonville Standard, and the Gallatin News won the top general excellence awards in their respective divisions at the association’s lunch ceremony, held in Chattanooga. Points are awarded for each entry, and general excellence honors are based on the newspaper’s total points in their division.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Tennessean (Nashville) each won 11 first-place awards. The Johnson City Press received eight first-place awards and the Bristol Herald Courier received seven first-place awards.
Among the many stories from 2018 cited for excellent work, contest judges highlighted the Tennessean’s coverage of the Waffle House shooting in Antioch, Tennessee.
As part of the annual contest, newspapers winning first-place awards in the categories of editorials, best single editorial, and public service received $250 prizes from UT’s Edward J. Meeman Foundation. The Gallatin News won three awards this year, one for each category.
UT has cosponsored the annual contest since 1940.
The Meeman Foundation was established in 1968 at UT to fund the contest, provide professional critiques of journalists’ work, and support journalism students and educators.
Reciprocal judging is done with another state’s association. This year, the Texas Press Association judged 1,406 entries from 72 of the Tennessee Press Association’s 129 member newspapers.
Full results of the contest are available online.
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Contact:
Charles Primm (865-974-5180, charles.primm@tennessee.edu)
Robyn Gentile (865-584-5761, rgentile@tnpress.com)