Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association awards

The News-Review was named the best newspaper of its size in the state during the annual Summer Publishers Convention of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association in mid-July.

In addition to winning the General Excellence award, the newsroom staff took home 25 awards in the ONPA’s Better Newspaper Contest.

I won three awards in the contest, which judged work printed in 2008.

I was given the second-place award in the “Best Feature Story: General” category for a story I wrote about Roseburg’s Charlie Company of the Oregon National Guard. I spent the weekend with the soldiers in Redmond, Ore., and wrote a story about their one-weekend-a-month training. The soldiers have since deployed to Iraq. Here is the link to the story.

I won third place in the “Best Feature Story: Personality” category for the story I wrote about Frank Lane, a local man who grew up on a California homestead. Here’s his story.

I also won third place in the “Best Writing” category. This category required me to submit three pieces of writing to be judged. I submitted the story about Frank Lane (see above), an enterprise story about women smoking during pregnancy and a health feature about a young man who was battling cancer. Blake Krieg died from cancer in December 2008.

It’s been humbling to have my work recognized by my peers during my first full year as a reporter.

Heartbreaker

I recently had to write one of the toughest stories I’ve come across. 

A high school senior who lives in one of the small cities in the northern part of the county was diagnosed with kidney failure last January. It had been a year since we ran anything on him, and the only story we did have didn’t have any comments from the boy himself. So my editor asked me to do a follow-up story.

Adam has been on dialysis for a year and is strong enough to go back to playing basketball for his high school. He still has dialysis three times a week and is still sick, but he managed to play, and play well.

I met with him and his mother and his 20-year-old sister who was going to give one of her kidneys to Adam. It was sad, but also encouraging to hear that things were looking up for Adam.

The day after the interview, as I was writing the story, Adam’s mother called me sobbing and let me know that the doctors decided not to let his sister donate a kidney after all. 

It broke my heart.

The family has been through so much already. They fought to get Adam insurance coverage, and finally did after battling astronomical bills. But through it all, Adam and his sister have maintained such a close bond, and it was horrible to know that she wanted to save him but couldn’t.

I sat at my desk and struggled with this story for hours. I’m 22 and have a 17-year-old brother who is a lot like Adam — athletic, a good kid and a dedicated person. I could see how easily Adam’s family could be my own and how devastated I would be to be in his sister’s shoes.

I don’t know that the story I wrote did justice — Adam and this family are amazing — but I tried. My hope is that this community will continue to rally behind Adam and that he’ll eventually get the transplant he deserves.

Here’s the story: http://www.newsreview.info/article/20080229/NEWS/620853845