The Gilroy Dispatch was awarded First Place for General Excellence, the highest honor for California newspapers, by the California News Publishers Association in the annual California Journalism Awards May 4.
The Dispatch competed in the weekly newspaper circulation 11,001-25,000 category.
The judge in the category wrote: “Solid writing and very newsy stories. I like the way they approach some governmental coverage with real people and not a recitation of events. There is nice ad support. The sports stories and photos were engaging and a real bright spot. Very nice work on the 150th anniversary section! South Valley section is beautifully designed, shot and features are written well.”
Two Dispatch staffers also won writing awards in the statewide competition.
Dispatch reporter Michael Moore won a second-place award for In-Depth Reporting for a series of stories in the Dispatch in 2018 on the death of Steven Juarez while in police custody.
The judge wrote of Moore’s reporting, “Dispatch does a good job of staying on top of a story critical to its community.”
Gilroy Dispatch sports editor Emanuel Lee won a fourth place award for Sports Feature Writing for an article he wrote in the Free Lance in Hollister in 2018.
The sister newspapers of the Dispatch also won awards—Good Times (eight), Metro Silicon Valley (six), North Bay Bohemian (one), Pacific Sun (one)—including three first-place awards for Metro’s Jennifer Wadsworth and one for Nick Veronin. One of Wadsworth’s winning articles in Metro, on the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, appeared in the Gilroy Dispatch.
