Arkansas Business and Greenhead magazine won two awards for editorial excellence in 2018 at the Alliance of Area Business Publishers conference held in Atlanta last week.
In the category for medium-sized publications, Arkansas Business Assistant Editor Kyle Massey won a gold award — first place — for "best scoop" for his story on the end of the $2.5 billion Clean Line energy project, titled, "Plains & Eastern Clean Line Appears Doomed in Arkansas."
"More than a month before the competition, this reporting revealed that a wind power transmission project was not going to be built after all," said the contest's judges, journalism professors from the University of Missouri at Columbia. "The project's failure had tremendous economic implications for the state of Arkansas — which lost out on a $600 million project expected to generate hundreds of jobs — and across the south-central U.S. corridor."
Greenhead, Arkansas Business Publishing Group's annual duck-hunting magazine, received the gold award for best ancillary publication, its sixth award and third gold in this category.
Publisher Chris Bahn, Editor Brent Birch, Managing Editor Todd Traub and Art Director Dean Wheeler received praise from the judges.
"This is a beautiful publication about the tradition and business of duck hunting, from the opening portraits of unusual hunting dogs through the back of the book," the judges said. "There is wonderfully descriptive and informative writing. Good use of white space in the design helps features pop. The unique focus is relevant to readers in a state where duck hunting is a revered activity."
Also at this year's conference, Arkansas Business Editor Gwen Moritz was inducted as AABP's president and will lead the lead the national nonprofit, which represents 55 independent magazine and newspaper members in the U.S., Canada and Australia, for the next year. Moritz has served on AABP's board of directors for five years.
"AABP has been invaluable to my development as an editor over the past 20 years, and I'm honored to take a turn as president of an organization that elevates our industry from California to Maine and Ottawa to Perth," Moritz said.
Headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, AABP honors members' best work with its editorial excellence competition with awards for journalism, photography and design excellence by regional business publications. This year's competition involved 511 entries from 41 publications, including the Crain's family of business publications in Detroit, New York, Chicago and Cleveland; the Indianapolis Business Journal; BizTimes Milwaukee; Business North Carolina; Florida Trend and others.
"The high-quality journalism being done by these publications keeps readers thoroughly up-to-date and, importantly, includes a lot of data, context and historical perspective that are especially important as truth increasingly gets drowned in a flood of social media snippets," said Reuben Stern, who coordinated the judging. "The winning entries once again combine solid research, great sourcing, excellent on-the-ground reporting, deep community knowledge, and creative thinking."
