OBJ brings home two Eagle awards

I just returned to the office this week after a three-day jaunt to American City Business Journals’ Charlotte, N.C., offices — home to the annual editors’ conference every October.

It’s a trip I look forward to because it’s about the only time I get to see fellow editors from around the ACBJ hemisphere all in one place.

But it’s also a trip I look forward to because of one, very serious thing that takes place each year at the editors’ conference: competition for awards.

Anyone who’s known me for more than 15 seconds knows two important things: I hate to lose at anything, and I really love to win awards.

OBJ is fortunate to have won numerous state and regional awards this past year — including being named the best weekly newspaper in Florida for our circulation division, but I digress — but the ACBJ awards always stand out because it’s an opportunity for a newspaper OBJ’s size to compete head-to-head against the biggest papers in our company.

Now, I know many might argue that awards don’t mean a lot because they don’t necessarily tell you much about the newspaper’s skill level or reporting ability or anything else.

To that, I say, “I don’t care.” I like bright shiny awards that can be displayed around the newsroom. I like the oohs and ahhhs at our events when Ann Sonntag, our publisher, mentions our recent awards tally. I like the look in people’s eyes when our name is called.

I

Love

Every

Single

Minute

Of

It.

So in case you were wondering how we did at this year’s ACBJ get-together, we brought home two awards from the 12 categories all our newspapers competed in.