The Opelika-Auburn News has won 21 awards in the 2022 Alabama Press Association Media contest, including eight first place awards. The awards were announced on June 26 at the association’s annual conference at Orange Beach.
The newspaper won first place for best special section for “ResilientLee: The story of how Lee County joined together to fight the pandemic.”
“Of all the awards we won, we’re most proud of this one,” said Dimon Kendrick-Holmes, editor of the O-A News. “We strive as a newsroom to write stories no one else does and to dig deep and explain things to readers, and with ‘ResilientLee’ we wanted to step back after covering COVID-19 so hard every single day and just tell the story of what a great community this is.”
The newsroom also won first place awards for local news coverage, local education coverage and best website, as well as second place for general excellence and third place for local economic coverage and best headline.
The sports department, headed by Deputy Editor Justin Lee, won first place for best local sports coverage. Lee also won second-place awards for in-depth sports news for “Tremendous team,” about the Auburn gymnastics program, and for sports column for “Auburn will never ‘stick to sports.’” He won second place, with Jordan Hill, for best special section for the annual prep football preview, and another second-place award, with Hill and intern Jake Weese, for best single-event sports story for “Iron Bowl agony.”
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Kendrick-Holmes won four awards for column writing, including first place for editorial column for “The perfect picture of courage”; second place for editorial column for “You think we should stop using AP?”; first place for sports column for “Nobody ever sees it coming”; and third place for humorous column for “Why a recent school board meeting reminded me of the movie ‘Elf.’” Kendrick-Holmes also won third place for in-depth news coverage for “Infusions: All we’ve got.”
The newspaper swept the category of best business story. Abbey Crank, an intern from Auburn University, won first place for “More than a copy shop” and second place for “How adding breakfast helped Byron’s Smokehouse.” Staff reporter Lauren Johnson won third place for “What’s coming to the Landings? (Hint: It’s not Topgolf).”
Mike Eads, who left the O-A News last summer to become an editor in Texas, won second place for in-depth news coverage for “Faculty fracas at Auburn University.”
“We’re always happy to win awards,” Kendrick-Holmes said, “but what matters most is what our readers think about what we write and if we’re giving them what they need and want.”