BVD makes respectable showing in 2018 Better Newspaper Contest

The Blackfoot Valley Dispatch scored six awards in this year's annual Montana Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest.

The BVD, a Division 1 publication with a circulation of less than 1250, picked up awards for news coverage, writing, page design and photography.

Hope Quay earned the top honor for the paper with the papers only first place award. Her piece, "Swan Renaissance," detailing last year's return of a nesting pair of trumpeter swans to Smith Lake and their successful hatching of four cygnets, earned her the Division 1 first place in the Mark Henckel Outdoor Writing Award category.

One of the most notable events of 2017 - the magnitude 5.8 earthquake that struck just south of Lincoln - didn't net any writing awards but the July 13, 2017 issue did earn the BVD a second-place award for Best Front Page.

The photo of the cleanup at D&D Foodtown on the morning of the earthquake that featured on that same front page also earned BVD editor Roger Dey a second-place recognition for Best News Photo. In a case of "two outta three ain't bad," Dey also took the third-place award for Best News Photo for his Aug. 18 image of the Arrastra and Park Creek fires burning at night. Nathan Bourne with the Seeley Swan Pathfinder took home the first-place plaque in the Best News Photo category for his image of a slurry bomber in action over last year's devastating Rice Ridge Fire.

Last summer saw plenty of ongoing news around Lincoln, but it was the BVD stories detailing last year's suspension of the cleanup effort at the Upper Blackfoot Mining Complex that earned a third-place award for Best Continuing News Coverage.

Finally, the two-page layout featuring images from the 2017 Lincoln Rodeo won third-place for Best Page Layout and Design, for what the judge called a "good arrangement of photos. Good captions, easy to navigate. Design invites the reader to linger over the page, which is good for the advertisers."

The Montana Newspaper Association announced the results of this year's contest at their 133rd Annual Convention, June 16. Judges for this year's contest came from members of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association.