Daily Herald wins 9 first-place awards and sweepstakes award in annual contest

The Daily Herald captured the James S. Copley sweepstakes award for the second straight year at the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association's annual newspaper competition.

The award is given to the daily newspaper that wins a points competition based on first-, second- and third-place showings in the contest.

All told, the Daily Herald won nine first-place awards, 10 second-place awards and six third-place awards.

"I'm so proud of the work our staff produces every day," said Vice President/Managing Editor Jim Baumann. "Day in and day out we try to be different, be special and matter to our readers. This kind of recognition is tells us we're on the right track."

First-place winners include:

• Senior Vice President/Editor John Lampinen for news series and also personality profile for his "Last Kiss" series that looked at the emotional aftermath of a spouse dying. Lampinen based his series on in-depth interviews and supplemented his stories with those deftly written by a number of readers coping with their own losses.

• Vice President/Managing Editor Jim Baumann for special section. Baumann has spearheaded annual special sections in recognition of National Newspaper Week for six years, and the one honored here focused on how readers can suss out fake news. "Wow, just wow!" the judges said.

• Assistant Managing Editor/Copy Desk Neil Holdway and News Editor Michelle Holdway won for headline writing for their Page 1 offerings on the 2017 solar eclipse, "SOLAR FLAIR," on one of the October 2017 Cubs playoff games, "Breaking Gridlock in Washington," and on our August 2017 sampling of the Cook County soda tax, "FIZZY MATH."

The Herald swept the headline writing category. Senior Multiplatform Copy Editor Kathleen Danes took second place and Associate Sports Editor Don Friske took third.

• Columnist Barry Rozner won for sports column. Rozner also took second place for sports story.

• Photographer John Starks won for sports photo for a picture of a jockey being launched from an injured horse at Arlington Park. He also won second place for sports photo and third place for spot news photo.

• Photographer Steve Lundy won for video for his piece on the annual pilgrimage for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Assistant Director of Visual Journalism Paul Valade won second place for video.

• Madhu Krishnamurthy and Jamie Sotonoff won for localized news story for their coverage of local residents who had been at the site of the shooting at the country music concert in Las Vegas.

• Susan Sarkauskas won for historical feature for a piece she did on Cahokia Mounds, which 1,000 years ago was the largest city in what would become the United States.