Manitoba newspaper award winners were announced Friday - and this year, The Reminder cleaned up.
Flin Flon's community newspaper won six separate awards and had eight podium finishes in the 2020 Manitoba Community Newspapers Association (MCNA) Better Newspapers Competition.Awards. While the annual awards are usually held in the spring, honours were delayed this year due to COVID-19.
The Reminder won Best in Class in its circulation class, along with winning Best Editorial Page in the same classification and finishing second in the Best Front Page category.
The Reminder has now won the Best in Class award in its circulation class for three straight years and five out of the last six years, winning in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Reporter Eric Westhaver won four awards and earned an additional podium finish. Westhaver won three separate awards for his weekly column "In Our Words", each coming in the first year Westhaver wrote a regular column. For "In Our Words," Westhaver won Best Columnist, Best Column or Feature on a Business Topic and Best Local Editorial on a Business Topic.
Westhaver also won Best Feature Story for "Photographer Whitbread's retirement hobby becomes obsession," written about the work and life of area photographer Randy Whitbread. Westhaver won the same award last year for a feature piece on local luthier Alastair Callegari.
A final award, a third place finish in the Best Photo Essay category, was awarded to Westhaver for his photo spread of the Flin Flon Community Choir's production of Mamma Mia.
The news comes after another strong showing for The Reminder in the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspaper Association (SWNA) Better Newspapers Competition, where the paper won two first-place awards and had eight podium finishes. Between the two contests, The Reminder won eight awards and finished top-three 16 times in award balloting for work published last year. Last year, The Reminder won nine awards and had 13 podiums between the same competitions.
The Reminder would like thank the MCNA and the voters in this year's competition for their consideration and each one of our readers, subscribers, advertisers and other backers for their continued support.
