"Newspaper of the Year" - A hollow award

The Pennsylvania Newspaper Assn.'s announcement today it had named the Erie Times-News "Newspaper of the Year" was hailed by itself and its feckless sycophants in the local blogosphere with unbecoming exultation. As a reality check, here's a copy of the blog I wrote when the PNA's foundation announced the annual 2009 press awards last April.

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In today’s edition, the Erie Times News announced that “thirteen Erie Times-News writers, photographers and page designers earned 18 top awards” in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Assn’s 2009 Keystone Press Awards statewide competition (By my count, it’s 17, but whose counting?).

In that context, Managing Editor Pat Howard boasted: "These awards reach into all corners of our newsroom to highlight excellence both in print and online. It's well-deserved recognition for the journalists being honored, and a reflection of the talent and commitment our entire staff brings to bear every day in serving our audiences in ways no other news organization in the region can.”

That seems curiously at odds with my longstanding contention that the Times-News’s press credentials are, with a few exceptions, by and large mediocre at best, its news and editorial coverage of issues, people and events important to its Erie readers usually inept, shallow, biased, unprofessional, irrelevant, mis and uninformed.

Unless I'm wrong, how could the Times-News seemingly have scored so lavishly in this year’s press awards competition?

Let’s put that into perspective. The article said that “The Times-News competes in Division II, for newspapers in the 50,000-to-99,999 circulation.” What the article didn’t do is put that distinction in context, which is needed to grasp its implications.

For purposes of the Keystone Awards, the commonwealth’s newspapers are divided into eight divisions. Division I includes Pennsylvania’s most prominent newspapers with the largest circulations. There are only seven of them: the largest, the Philadelphia Inquirer which also publishes the Philadelphia Daily News; the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Allentown Morning Call, the Pittsburgh Tribune, the Harrisburg Patriot-News and - although it’s technically a statewide cooperative news service, not a newspaper - the Associated Press.

Division Two consists of six newspapers: the Erie Times-News, the York Daily Record/Sunday News, the Scranton Times-Tribune, the Reading Eagle, the Bucks County Courier-Times, and the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/Sunday News. In each division .there are about 40 award categories, with awards being given for first and second place winner, and in a few cases honorable mention. That means there are about 120 different award opportunities available to Division II newspapers, of which the Times-News received awards in 17.

However, less than half the categories deal with the principal news and editorial writing functions, which are the hallmark of any newspaper, and about half of those encompass sports writing, a lesser function in terms of the broad public interest.
In the most important news writing category, investigative reporting, the Times-News did not score, beat out by the York Daily Record/Sunday News and the Scranton Times-Tribune.

In another key function, editorial writing, the Times-News took a second place. In commentary/columns, the Times-News was outwritten by the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal and the York Sunday News. In the spot news category, the Times-News was bested by the York Daily Record and the Reading Eagle. In the ongoing news category, it tanked, losing out to the Bucks County and Scranton newspapers.

The Times-News took a first in the Special Projects category and second place in the “niche” category, whatever that is. It also took a second place in news series writing, firsts in feature and /feature beat writing, a first for a business/consumer story, a first in sports beat reporting, a second in feature photo, first in sports photo and second in online journalistic innovation (the internet). It lost out in News Beat reporting to the Reading and Lancaster papers. Photographer Jack Hanrahan distinguished himself with a top Specialty award in the visual category in competion with all of Pennsylvania’s newspapers, including the Big Seven.

Though the Times-News appears to have won its proportionate share of press awards, the most telling factor is that none of them was in the top most vital news and editorial reporting and writing categories

Another interesting point to note is that all of the Times-News’s A-list reporters, writers and columnists were skunked in the competition, like Howard, Ed Mead, Kevin Cuneo, Kevin Flowers, John Guerriero and Ed Palattella.

Also noteworthy is that most of the top news and editorial writing awards went to newspapers in the more densely populated eastern part of the state, where, unlike the Times-News, they face intense competition from other newspapers, including big metropolitan sheets.