Jonathan McNiven
Well, Folks, I’m going to do a little shameless self-promotion this week (as Dave Rye calls it) and talk about our staff, newspaper and the awards our newspaper won last Saturday at the Montana Newspaper Association’s Annual convention in Kalispell.
As you read on the front page of this week’s paper, we can finally tell you the results as we finally have them from the Better Newspaper Contest we participated in this year.
This year’s awards are special and historic for our newspaper for a number of reasons.
First, look at the number of staff, broadcasters, and contributors we had throughout the 2023 year. We had a total of 18 people regularly involved with the newspaper in one way or another. From our weekly contributors, reporters, and broadcasters to our delivery people and production staff, we managed to put together the dream team that won the top spot in our division! This has never been done in the entire history of the Yellowstone County News. Every one of these people contributed in a way that lightened the burden for everyone else so as to allow each person to have the time to do quality work and collectively together win the top spot. I can’t thank them enough for being part of this achievement as winning the top newspaper in our division has never been done before.
Its impossible to eat an elephant in one bite. However, eating one bite at a time will eventually allow the elephant to be eaten. So, in regards to how we are going to do this? One bite at a time!
Secondly, winning the General Excellence Award is not easy either when we are going up against bigger newspapers with way bigger staff. Our total staff right now is about half of what we had last year so we’re building up again and looking to fill a reporter position, production specialist, legal specialist, and I’m also looking to finalize a political and sports reporter if I can. I’ll announce more of that in the near future.
Third, winning the Best Newspaper Award (for our division 3) has never, I say NEVER been achieved for our paper in the 47 years of YCN’s existence so this achievement our staff accomplished is “huuuuuuge”, as Donald Trump would say. In addition, it just reemphasizes the smaller wins and achievements we’ve accomplished over the last 10 years owning the newspaper. Last year, we thought we won a lot when we placed in 12 categories and even though we placed in some of the categories, it did not even amount to enough points to place in the top three newspapers, but this year was different as we placed 1st in nine of the 17 categories.
Fourth, we had nine different staff members place in this contest. It just goes to show that each person is good and great at what they do, whether it was investigative journalism stories, column writing, editorials, photos, videos, ad design, campaign marketing or just production and layout. We’ve got some great people working here. I feel it needs to be noted that Evelyn Pyburn has won 1st place in Best Editorial again this year making it the third year in a row. She has set the bar high as she now has a 3-peat for Best Editorial. Michael Marino’s Investigative Story about Nightmare off Yellowstone Trail is a first for our Investigative reporting series. In fact, we’ve even had a number of threatened lawsuits this last year as a result of some of our stories and this was one of them. Another note, Tana McNiven’s first ad she made in Photoshop garnered 1st place as she used local photography in her ad to sell a product or service. Please make sure to congratulate our staff members and their achievements as doing a superior job in the newspaper industry does not get as much glamour as I think it should for doing a good job, BUT to be recognized by those within your industry and reach the top spot is even more honorable. Thank you to all our staff who made this achievement possible. I never thought in a 100 years we could achieve this.
Fifth, all these small successes keep the momentum and excitement going for the next achievement. We’ve got some pretty big thresholds on our bucket list, and I can tell you that some are coming more slowly than I planned, but I can assure you that our goals have not changed since purchasing the newspaper almost 10 years ago. In fact, I always talk about the tip of the iceberg in painting that picture and helping our readers know that if you can only see the tip of the iceberg, imagine what you can’t see.
As for the Yellowstone County News, this recognition is just the tip of the iceberg as we are already working on some additional fronts that will enhance your experience and interaction with YCN as well as some additional things for the fall broadcasts.
If you can only see the tip of the iceberg in regards to where the Yellowstone County News is going, Imagine what you can’t see. Give us Time! It will get clearer in time.
So, once again, if you can only see the tip of our YCN iceberg, imagine what you can’t see clearly yet.
In the meantime, see you in the paper.
JDM
P.S. Let us know what you think by sending us a letter to the editor at letters@yellowstonecountynews.com .
