The Honolulu Star-Bulletin won nine top awards Saturday night at the Excellence in Journalism contest sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists' Hawaii Chapter. Star-Bulletin wins
9 journalism awardsStar-Bulletin staff
Christine Donnelly, Pat Omandam and Lucy Young-Oda won the public service reporting award, the highest in the open print competition, for "The Hawaiian Roundtable: Holo I Mua." Judges said it was a "nice effort to bring Hawaii's leaders together on the fractious issue of Hawaiian national sovereignty. The A-1 piece and the special section admirably reflect this newspaper's concerns and its commitment to its readers on a big issue."
Of Rick Daysog's investigative reporting award for "Bishop Estate Ex-trustees Politicking," judges said, "Daysog should teach a course on how to turn complex paper trails into comprehensive, tell-all exposes on the clever corruption."
The Star-Bulletin staff -- Christine Donnelly, Debra Barayuga, Suzanne Tswei, Pat Omandam, Crystal Kua, Gordon Y.K. Pang, Treena Shapiro and Steve Murray -- took the spot news reporting award for their work on the Xerox murders verdict in "It's Over. But ..."
Michael Rovner and David Swann's "Strength and Honor" package on the World War II Medal of Honor recipients won for page design in both the news and feature categories.
Betty Shimabukuro's "Angel of Ewa Beach" won the feature writing/short-form category, and Ken Ige's "At the midway, what goes up" photograph won for feature photography.
Diane Chang's "Changing Hawaii" was picked for best column writing, and Corky Trinidad won for editorial cartoon.
The Honolulu Advertiser won top awards in business reporting, general news/enterprise reporting, feature writing/long form, government reporting, sports reporting, editorial opinion and informational graphics.
Matthew Thayer of the Maui News took first-place awards for news and sports photography, as well as for photo essay.
Honolulu Magazine won seven categories. Pacific Business News and Hana Hou! Magazine each took three first-place awards, while Lahaina News, Spirit of Aloha and Island Business Magazine received one apiece.
Hawaii Public Radio had the winner and both finalists in the only radio category, radio feature reporting.
In television news, KGMB won the public service reporting award as well as four others. KHNL won three awards and KITV won two.
A complete list of award winners can be viewed at www.flex.com/~smorita.