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Hauling home some hardware

Hauling home some hardware Hauling home some hardware

These days it seems like there are award shows for just about everything. Obviously, there are awards handed out to athletes such as Most Improved, or Most Valuable Player, and that sort of thing.

There are awards given to actors, musicians and artists. I’m sure there’s probably some committee that even hands out awards to the best clown. I’m sure there’s more than a few musicians or actors who would be deserving of that award, but for all the wrong reasons.

As it turns out, there are also awards for newspapers and reporters. Every year the Wisconsin Newspaper Association (WNA) holds the Better Newspaper Contest. In a normal year, there’s a big convention, usually in a place like Madison, or Milwaukee or Green Bay.

The convention is a good place to rub elbows with others in the field, and talk about the latest trends in the business and to discuss better ways to deliver news to our readership.

I’ve never been able to attend any of these conventions, usually because they tend to occur in the middle of my winter sports season. I missed one of these gatherings because I was in Green Bay, covering the Colby girls basketball’s run to the state tournament.

Not that I minded that. I’ll never forget seeing the girls on the court of the Resch Center, and seeing their faces on the Jumbotron screen that sits above that court.

I missed another WNA convention last year on account of COVID-19. For the second year in a row, the coronavirus also cancelled an in-person WNA convention. I wish I could have attended that one, since I won several awards from the work I put in last year.

Actually, I’ve won multiple second and third place results, along with a few honorable mentions for my photography and stories that I have written since I came here several years ago. It’s always a humbling feeling when someone recognizes your work, and feels it’s award winning.

This year though, I finally broke through and earned several first prizes. There’s a plaque that goes with a first prize, and the two I won now adorn the front office. Winning those is something I am proud of, but not necessarily something I actively look for.

In fact, what I am most proud of in the last year or so, is that I, and my co-workers, kept our papers going in the midst of the first global pandemic in over a century. Somehow, some way, my editor Kevin and I were able to fill up empty pages with pictures and stories for months.

I was able to keep a sports section going when so many papers simply threw their hands up, claimed it was an impossible task, and either ignored their sports section or reprinted old stories.

I spent COVID-19 shedding light on student-athletes exploits, as well as the strength that people and students at Colby and Abbotsford have shown these past 12 months since COVID-19 first came to our shores.

In short, it’s you guys who are the ones who make winning an award possible. So yes, the recognition is nice, but I don’t do it for that. I do it because I love telling a story. I do it because journalism matters.

M USINGS AND G RUMBLINGS

ROSS PATTERMANN REPORTER

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