Piscataquis Observer wins six MPA awards

    The Piscataquis Observer won six awards at the Maine Press Association’s (MPA) annual fall conference on Saturday, Oct. 26 and staff writer Mike Lange was elected to a two-year term on the MPA board of directors.
    Staff writer Stuart Hedstrom won a second-place award for Picture Story and a third-place award in the Feature Photo category; while the newspaper also won second-place awards in the News Photo, Feature Story and Education Story categories.

    The Observer staff took second-place in the Best Newspapers in Education Idea category.
    Lange previously served on the MPA Board of Directors and was the organization’s executive director from 2008-10.
    A total of 30 newspapers entered the Better Newspaper Contest this year, submitting a total of 1,443 entries in 57 categories.
    The Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram were named the daily and weekend Newspapers of the Year, respectively, in the MPA Better Newspaper Contest.
    For the second year in a row, the Mount Desert Islander of Bar Harbor was named Newspaper of the Year in the competition for weeklies with circulation of 4,000 or more and the York County Coast Star of Kennebunk won the award in the competition for smaller papers.
    The conference at the Atlantic Oceanside Hotel and Conference Center in Bar Harbor drew more than 240 people.
    Lindsay Tice, a longtime staff writer for the Sun Journal, was named Journalist of the Year by the MPA; Michael Shepherd was the winner of the annual Bob Drake Young Writer’s Award and the MPA’s first Unsung Hero Award went to Nancy Larsen of The Ellsworth American.
    The MPA also inducted three new members to its Hall of Fame: former Portland Press Herald editor and columnist Don Hansen, Bangor Daily News photo editor Scott Haskell and Emery “Legs” Labbe, the former publisher of the St. John Valley Times.