(photo above: Brett Yates, winner of the Thomas Butson Award for In-Depth Journalism)
I started the Red Hook Star-Revue ten years ago this summer. The main reason was that I like the newspaper business, a second reason was that I found Red Hook a challenging and interesting community, which I suspected had lots of stories to tell.
A third reason was that beginning in the 1970’s, when I worked first for The Villager, and then with Brooklyn’s Phoenix, I loved going to the annual NYS Press Association’s spring convention in Albany. The centerpiece of that weekend was always the Better Newspaper Contest. My boss, the late Mike Armstrong, who we memorialized a few months ago on the front page after his unfortunate Covid death, made frequent walks to the dais, cigar in hand (you could smoke them inside in those days), picking up lots of first place awards in categories such as coverage of local government, best spot news reporting, photography and so forth. Occasionally he let me go up to accept an award.
In between the award luncheons and dinners we attended newspaper seminars, and at the end of the day we all retreated to various bars and room stocked with liquor to talk newspaper talk and get drunk with people who did the same things that we did in various parts of the state. It made one feel like professionals, which I guess is what we all were.
I was very excited to have the Star-Revue accepted into the organization a few years after our founding, and we have been prizewinners in seven out of the next eight years.
Postponed by COVID
Convention weekend was supposed to be the end of March, but of course, by the middle of March all conventions were cancelled. The contest results were not announced, as the press association staff was hoping that sooner or later we could have a real convention.
Well, sooner didn’t happen and later would be too late, so like a lot of things, including school, we ended up having a virtual awards celebration. No booze, no hobnobbing, simply 4 half hour YouTube video presentations, presenting the awards without the food, liquor or cameraderie.
It was still exciting to watch the four videos, presented two a day at the end of August, one at lunchtime and one at dinnertime. In fact, for the last one I drove up to Port Chester to be with my friend Richard Abel, publisher of the Westmore News, in his office, with his staff. If there were no COVID, these would be the people I’d be sitting with, up there at the Gideon Putnam ballroom in Saratoga Springs.
Six to One
I’m super excited to announce that we did quite well – our best year yet! We won six awards in total – three first places, one second, and two honorable mentions. I can say in noting that of all Brooklyn’s community newspapers, including the Couriers and the Brooklyn Papers and the Eagles and the Stars, the only other award winner was the Bay News/Brooklyn Graphic, which took a first place in the design of an advertisement. We six, they one, everybody else nil.
The contest was dominated by The Express Newspaper Group, publishers of the Sag Harbor Express, The Southampton Press, and the East Hampton Press, who won almost twice as many awards as the next best chain, also in Long Island, composed of the Suffolk Times, The News-Review and the Shelter Island Reporter. Just in case anybody is keeping track, the Star-Revue publishes only one paper – this one.
Reporter Brett Yates won the “Thomas G. Butson Award for In-Depth Reporting.” In fact, he not only won first place in our division, but second as well. As a side note, Thomas Butson was a one-time publisher of the Villager.
Traveled to Amazon
The prize winner was for Brett’s series on last-mile distribution centers, of which Red Hook will soon be home to three (as detailed elsewhere in this issue). As part of his reporting, Brett traveled to an Amazon distribution center in New Jersey and toured the facility. His idea, not mine. If there ever was an enterprising reporter, Yates is it.
The judge’s comment was this –
“Thorough and clear reporting/writing. The lack of attribution struck me as freeing for the writer without sounding made up. You really knew how things work and what the issues are from a lot of angles. I loved this line, which visually describes the business model: Insofar as we’ve accepted a retail model that, by standard practice, whenever someone wants to buy a box of toothpicks, immediately sends a truck to deliver those toothpicks directly to the buyer’s doorstep instead of asking him to walk a few blocks to a store, last-mile distribution centers must exist.”
His second place was for a story that ran in May, 2019. “The Monster That Surrounds You: Tyjuan Hill, Ronald Williams,and the 76th Precinct,” went into the history of some questionable police practices in our local precinct. It didn’t win us many friends at the police station, but here’s what the judge said:
“An amazing piece of journalism. The time, the effort, the story was outstanding, especially about the self-righteous cop and the phases the police force went to try to improve relations and the case stories. Overall, many strong stories put together.”
Brett and our intrepid neighborhood reporter Nathan Weiser shared our other first place award – “Coverage of Education.” This was for Nathan’s year-long coverage of the Summit Academy, PS 676, Summit’s outrage of the Halloween arrests of Black pre-teens, and Brett’s excellent storyquestioning the need for NYS Regent exams. The judges wrote: “Outstanding writing. Thoughtful, fresh and clear writing tackles complex subjects delivering readers the genuine local journalism every community deserves.”
We won second place in “Coverage of Religion.” This was for Erin DeGregorio’s two stories about Mother Cabrini. There was a citywide controversy that involved a local figure – Mother Cabrini! The mayor’s wife thought that to correct the dearth of statues honoring women around the city. She held a contest to decide on the subjects. The top vote getter was Mother Cabrini, who performed selfless works of charity in Carroll Gardens and elsewhere, enough so that she was named a Saint (not a small honor). However, First Lady Chirlane chose not to honor her right away, in favor of others such as Shirley Chisholm, and Erin write about the controversy and steps that good Catholics like the governor were going to correct the omission. Erin also put together a Mother Cabrini listicle. The judge said simply: “Fascinating and interesting reporting.”
Our third First Place award was in a category called “Best Multi-Advertiser Pages.” This was a front and center page spread that ran three months last year (and the year before) that catered to the many tourists we had back in those days. We created a map and a little historical copy and sold ads around them. This project was spearheaded by Liz Galvin, with the help of Jamie Yates, who together make up our intrepid sales team. The judge said: ” This is a fun and interesting spread that just spelled FUN.”
We actually won another advertising award – this one for an ad that promoted ourselves. It was my takeoff on Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool album, which I put together back in those halcyon days when we were trying to be cool. This was an honorable mention and the judge said: ”Cool! But also hot. Excellent use of color and style increases the impact with album-cover style.”
All very exciting. It’ll be even more exciting if we can go back to in-person next year!
And for reading our paper, the publisher humbly appreciates your interest.
