Award-winning work at the Star

To be honest, I’ve never cared about winning awards for my work.

I won’t argue that it doesn’t feel good to have our work recognized by our peers. It does. I also won’t argue against how good it feels to walk to a podium and accept those awards. However, I’ve always been of the opinion that while the awards and kudos that comes with them is nice to have, it does not and should not be the main reason for me to get out of bed and come to work.

Ensuring people are accurately informed, working to be a government watchdog for Green River and Sweetwater County and finding an interesting story and telling it are far more important goals than plastering the Green River Star’s walls with certificates and ribbons. However, we would be remiss in not sharing our accomplishments and accolades with our readers and let them know our peers believe we’re doing a great job.

During the Wyoming Press Association’s Winter Conference Jan. 17-19, The Green River Star received six Pacemaker awards for work in news writing, advertising and opinion writing. The Star’s editor, Stephanie Thompson won first place in Government Issue Reporting, first place in Plus Business Advertising Idea and an honorable mention in Spot News. I received second place in Arts/Entertainment/Culture Reporting, and honorable mentions in the Column Writing and General News categories.

Judges in Government Issue Reporting and General News commented about our ability to take complex issues, the county’s situation with Bank of the West in Stephanie’s case and a meeting about the county seeking impact funding from the Gateway West Transmission Line project in mine, and explain them in an easy to understand manner. Judges also commented on the strong entries submitted for Column Writing and had positive comments about the choice to cover the Green River High School student walk out in Spot News.

We’re committed to being the best we can be for our readers and the community we’re a part of. The awards we received show our commitment is recognized by our peers. Regardless of what awards we win, our goal is for the eyes of the entire county to be on us each week we publish and produce a newspaper Green River’s residents can be proud to call their hometown newspaper.