I was honored to have received several awards from the New Mexico Press Associaton in its 2022 Better Newspapers Contest. The awards were for work I did for the Roswell Daily Record. My thanks to the Record for letting me accept my awards even though I had moved on to the Silver City Daily Press.

I’m quite happy to say two of the awards were for first place, something I had never quite been able to achieve before.

1st Place General News Photo

This photo was taken during a meeting of the Roswell City Council in which they were debating at least eight options for redrawing the city’s wards following the release of the 2020 Census. I didn’t really think a photo from a council meeting had a chance, but I did really like the way almost all eyes were on the consultant (far right) as he worked with the suggestions of the mayor (far left).

1st Place, Education Writing

Mock DUI crash brings real-life message to students

This story covers a program in Chaves County school districts in which a mock DUI crash is staged in front of a school. The organizations involved are numerous — local and state law enforcement, the fire department, EMS, hospitals, the local courts — and they go all out. We rarely get this close to the “action,” so to speak when there is a crash, because we don’t want to get in the way of the work of the first responders, so this was an interesting exercise for me, as well.

I also received a second-place award for feature photo and shared a first-place award with two other RDR staff members for photo series.