On Friday evening, the Georgia Press Association (GPA) held its annual conference in Jekyll Island. At the conference, it was introduced that our workforce right here at The Covington News gained a number of high three awards throughout a number of classes of the Better Newspaper Contest. 

The greatest award our workforce acquired was being No. 3 within the General Excellence, which implies we’re the third finest newspaper publication in Georgia for newspapers our measurement. This comes after final 12 months being acknowledged because the No. 1 newspaper for our measurement within the state. 

Both are honors to be happy with and I do know I’m. I’ve been blessed and lucky to be part of a famous person workers that’s being acknowledged among the many finest statewide.  

Kudos to promoting director Cynthia Blackshear-Warren, promoting representatives Lee Ann Avery and Brian Worton and Legals Clerk Alicia Goolsby for serving to our workforce get pleasure from all of this success this go spherical. 

You may even name us the “Dream Team.” 

To assist result in our high three end had been a number of particular person honors. For occasion, we had two, first place awards in editorial and gained first place in 5 promoting classes. 

While I’m happy with everybody’s accomplishments, there are 4 particular awards I’m most happy with as sports activities editor of The Covington News. 

Our correspondent Garrett Pitts, who’s a school pupil at Kennesaw State University, too, wrote three tales for him to win first place within the Sports Feature Story class. He additionally completed second within the Sports Photo class. 

I used to be awarded second and third place within the Sports Features Story class as nicely, with six of my tales being acknowledged. 

That means, of the newspapers our measurement in Georgia, our workforce is taken into account the most effective at telling sports activities characteristic tales. And that simply makes this sports activities editor so completely satisfied. 

I personally by no means aspired to perform that, particularly however, understanding our sports activities protection workforce swept this specific class is superior. My foremost mission is to offer our readers extra in-depth, eye-catching content material that they’ll subscribe and buy newspapers for. 

In truth, after I turned sports activities editor of The Covington News in July 2021, I needed our publication to start digging deeper into extra behind the scenes sort tales. My private perception is, extra readers and shoppers will get extra from a feature-type story than only a run-of-the-mill recap of a recreation or different stuff. 

Garrett and I share this philosophy, too. 

Toward the top of summer season 2022, Garrett and I met to debate our protection plans for the 2022-23 college 12 months. In that dialog, we each honed in on the thought of manufacturing extra feature-type tales as an alternative of being simply recreation story oriented. 

Since that second inside Amici’s restaurant, each Garrett and myself — in addition to DJ Moore who joined our workforce later — have lined, reported on and written about some distinctive options. 

Even earlier than that, what me essentially the most about storytelling is discovering these tales you can’t simply discover in a statistics e book. Whether it’s options or profiles, I’ve at all times been drawn extra to these kinds of tales. 

It takes extra power and creativity to search out and write these sorts of articles, however it’s so price it, I imagine. 

But understanding our concerted efforts of telling extra feature-type tales was acknowledged by the GPA is a big honor for me. Plus, to see Garrett’s particular person development as a reporter, storyteller {and professional} is a big honor I’ve week-to-week. 

I’m glad that his work as a journalist and photographer was awarded, as a result of he’s a famous person for our protection workforce in numerous methods. 

I’ve already had just a few folks ask, “Which stories and photos won these awards for you?” Unfortunately, that info gained’t be made public for just a few weeks. But, as quickly as it’s, we are going to share it on our @covnewssports Facebook and Twitter accounts. So, keep tuned. 

In the meantime, I need to give a particular “Thank you” to the coaches and gamers who’ve interviewed with us and helped us inform these tales. Without every one in all your assist, carrying out this wouldn’t be attainable. 

Also, thanks to the devoted readers and followers of our sports activities protection of Newton County space athletics. We admire all of you. 

Lastly, I need to make one promise. Even although we obtained such excessive honors statewide, the plan is to not relaxation on our laurels. Our workforce nonetheless aspires to maintain in search of out these tales a median fan can’t see and doing our greatest to share these in a compelling trend. 

Overall, we are going to maintain pushing the envelope ahead.