Quad-City Times wins national awards

By Times staff | Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Quad-City Times received three awards — a first place, a second place and an honorable mention — in the 2007 Suburban Newspaper Association editorial contest, it was announced Friday.

The entries were selected from more than 3,000 submitted to the annual contest for daily and weekly newspapers from across the nation.

The Quad-City Business Journal earned first-place honors in the Best Business Publication category. The monthly publication is mailed to more than 11,000 subscribers. It is produced by a team headed by Times business editor Deb Brasier and reporters Jennifer DeWitt and Doug Schorpp. The winning Business Journal entry featured an economic overview report on Dubuque, Iowa, that was written by features reporter Kay Luna and photographed by photo editor Kevin E. Schmidt.

Reporter Sheena Dooley took second place in the Best In-Depth Reporting category for a series published in August about teacher salaries in the Quad-Cities. Dooley built a database of every teacher’s salary in Quad-City school districts, and her analysis of the information showed that teachers in the Illinois Quad-Cities

Newsroom artist Joe Kelley took honorable mention in the Best Graphic Artwork (supporting news content) category with a portfolio of three works: “Vendoland Takeover,” a Health section cover that featured a drawing of fruit storming a vending machine; Varsity Comix, which featured the top area boys basketball players as comic book superheroes; and a story-form map showing the route of the Quad-City Times Bix 7 road race and related activities for the Bix weekend.

 Judging was done by representatives of the American Press Institute.