Issaquah/Sammamish Reporter wins six awards in statewide newspaper contest

By Kendall Watson • October 5, 2009 9:31 pm
The WNPA represents about 130 community newspapers in Washington state publishing mostly general-interest news.
The WNPA represents about 130 community newspapers in Washington state publishing mostly general-interest news.

Issaquah/Sammamish Reporter staff has won six awards – including three first places – in the 2009 Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Better Newspaper Contest.

The winners for the non-daily newspaper competition were announced Oct. 2 in Olympia. Three members of the editorial department, both past and present, earned recognition in this year’s competition.

The awards were as follows, with all stories published in the Issaquah/Sammamish Reporter unless otherwise noted:

Awards went to:

• Sports Editor Kevin Endejan: Sportswriter of the Year finalist, and first place for best sports feature (about female high school wrestlers Lexi Willcher and Kristen Meacham).

• Reporter Katie Regan: First place, news of the weird (about a rooster attack on Front Street) and third place, best business story (about Sammamish resident Sergio Barajas’s own Tequila brand).

• Reporter Kendall Watson: First place, best short news feature story (“‘Not sure how’ to say goodbye”, Kirkland Reporter), and third place, best crime and courts story (“Hit and Run ‘Hero’?”, Kirkland Reporter).

The Issaquah Reporter and Sammamish Reporter are Group IV newspapers, which must have a circulation over 12,000.

The roughly 80 members of the state association of non-daily newspapers submitted nearly than 2,500 entries for the 2009 contest and 569 awards were conferred.