Petersburg Pilot -

Along with a slew of other awards, the Petersburg Pilot won best weekly newspaper in Alaska at this year’s Alaska Press Club awards competition—the annual awards program recognizing quality journalism in print, radio and television across the state.

“This weekly has it all: amazing color photos, such as the blue iceberg, solar storms and orcas; and a terrific layout,” wrote Cheryl Thompson in her judges’ comments. “Very clean and easy to read. And I love the ‘Yesterday’s news’ section.” Some of the entries included photo submissions by Carey Case and Gina Esposito. The Pilot often runs professional quality photos provided by local photographers.

The Petersburg Pilot along with the 21 other weekly newspapers in Alaska submit work across a broad range of categories where an independent panel of professional journalists across the country judge first, second and third place awards for submitted pieces.

Three Pilot staff brought home five awards.

Pilot page designer Orin Pierson won a second place award in the Best Page and Design Layout category.

Pilot reporter Jess Field won a third place award in the Best Arts Reporting for his story “Local man help creates masterpiece” and a third place award in Best Reporting on Science for his story “Local man helps create masterpiece sculptures” and “Inadequate snow cover linked to yellow cedar decline.”

Judges submit written comments for some of the awards. For Fields’ science story, the judge wrote, “Well written, elegantly explained with attention to the multiple questions posed by the research.”

Pilot reporter Kyle Clayton won a third place award in the Best Education Reporting category for his story “School board creates memorial policy.” The judge wrote of his story, “Clayton explores the emotionally fraught issue of what to do with memorials to lost students. This is one of those questions that can be seen from many points of view and the story captures that well.”

Clayton also won first place in the Best Reporting on Science for his story “NASA scientist cites evidence for meteor plummeting over Petersburg.” The judge wrote of his story, “Kudos for the effort spent tracking down evidence for what might have been a meteor and for not overstating the evidence.”

The annual Alaska Press Club conference and awards ceremony takes place in Anchorage every spring.

KFSK’s Angela Denning also brought home three awards for her work.

The Pilot won second place in the Best Weekly category in 2014 and first place in 2013.