The Tri-County Herald won its fourth consecutive Sequoyah Award and won four first-place awards in the Oklahoma Press Association’s annual Better Newspaper Contest.
Results were announced Monday and covered work published in 2019.
The Sequoyah Awards are presented to the top newspapers among the press association’s 170 member papers.
“It’s exciting to be involved with people who perform at this high of a level,” said Brian Blansett, editor and publisher of the Herald, Stroud American and Lincoln County News.
The three papers are currently published in a combined edition as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but were published separately for all of 2019.
Former Herald intern Jaden Jennings won the 2019 Best of the Best sweepstakes award for writing the best personal column, which was titled “The night depression didn’t win.”
Jennings interned at the Herald last summer and graduated from Oklahoma Baptist University in the spring. She will begin work on her master’s degree at Baylor University in the fall.
The Herald’s first-place awards were for editorial writing, photography, sports coverage and community leadership.
Additionally, Chelsea Weeks won a first-place award for news photography in the Stroud American for a photo of a dancer at the annual Sac & Fox PowWow and Brian Blansett won first place awards for sports photography, feature photography and column writing.
Weeks won a secondplace award in news photography and Kindra Blansett won third place in news writing.