What the?? Part 2

Holy heck! The Herald kicked -ss!

We won First for the General Excellence at the North Dakota Newspaper Association award banquet, which the City Beat made an embarassing big deal out of below. Further more, we also won the Sweepstakes prize, which went to the newspaper that won the most awards.

That means -- dare I say it? -- we're No. 1!

This is a big deal for two reasons: 1) We're always getting kicked around by our rivals in Fargo and haven't won in ages. One of their people confided to me that it was embarrassing how often they won. Poor things. And 2) The Herald is up for sale and none of us know what will happen to us. I call these awards job security. Ironically, the guys in Fargo are one of the people that want to buy us.

On the other hand, this isn't a big deal because these awards are not exactly handed out by a blue-ribbon panel. Judges are usually volunteers from some newspaper in another state. This year, it was Montana. I'm not sure how it worked this time but when my old friend Sam Black, the former City Beat reporter, volunteered, he was the only judge for a single category. I helped out a little, which made for a judging panel of only two, too small, in my opinion. It's no one's fault, of course, because getting crazy-busy people like reporters to volunteer is no easy task.