Sun wins and wins, including top journalist award

Sunday, Sept. 30, 2007 | 6:57 a.m.

RENO - The Las Vegas Sun has won 11 first-place journalism awards in the Nevada Press Association's 2007 Better Newspaper Contest, including freedom of the press and outstanding journalist, which was earned by education writer Emily Richmond.

The Sun won 39 awards overall. The results were announced last night at an awards banquet at the National Automobile Museum.

Other publications owned by the Greenspun family also did well in the contest. The Henderson Home News won 38 writing, editing, photo and design awards and six advertising awards. The Home News also was named best mid-size weekly in the state and won the contest among both weekly and daily papers for editorial of the year. A piece by Nick Christensen on the Nevada smoking initiatives won that honor.

The Boulder City News won 40 journalism awards and was named best weekly in the state among small weekly newspapers. Business weekly In Business Las Vegas won 10 awards, including best editorial writing for mid-size weekly newspapers.

"I'm very pleased for all our winners, and I'm pleased with what they won," said Michael J. Kelley, managing editor of the Sun.

"Emily Richmond is a wonderful reporter and writer who sets the standard for education coverage in Nevada, and everyone here is happy to see her get this well-deserved recognition.

"Winning the freedom of the press award is important to us as individual journalists and as a journalistic institution. The United States is the great country it is in large part because our press is free to find and write the truth, keeping our citizens fully informed and letting the chips fall. We are proud to contribute our share to that effort."

Kelley also is the editor of the Henderson Home News and its seven sister publications, including the Boulder City News and In Business Las Vegas.

The Reno Gazette-Journal took home the top prize for general excellence among large daily newspapers in the state, which is an honor recognizing the whole newspaper, including advertising. The Gazette-Journal won eight journalism awards and four advertising awards.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal won 16 journalism awards and four advertising awards. The Nevada Appeal in Carson City won three journalism awards.

There are several contest categories the Sun does not participate in because it does not have an advertising staff and does not produce special sections.

Richmond won the top individual honor as outstanding journalist among Nevada's daily newspapers. Judges praised her education coverage and said her "sharp eye for detail is matched by a beautiful style that strips the bureaucratese from a topic that could be - and is - a bore in less skilled hands."

Richmond also won best feature story for a piece about the Clark County School District's efforts to recruit teachers.

The Sun's investigation into the UNLV Foundation's $500 million fundraising campaign won the freedom of the press award. The Sun's Christina Littlefield met resistance checking out tips that the foundation was misrepresenting the amount of money it had raised. She had to fight to obtain documents to try to verify the foundation's claims.

After months of dogged reporting and digging for information, Littlefield had enough information to put together a database of donations. Her reporting showed that the foundation was not conforming to university system standards of accounting, much less nationally accepted standards. The foundation also had significantly inflated its fundraising totals, undercutting the integrity of its campaign.

"In order to have a first-rate university, there first needs to be honesty, which the Sun series skillfully showed," the judges commented.

In the weeks after the story was published, the foundation changed its practices and the executive director resigned.

Among the Sun's other first-place awards: