ABPG Wins 5 Awards for Excellence at AABP

Arkansas Business, ArkansasBusiness.com and Greenhead magazine received five awards for editorial excellence in 2017 at the Alliance of Area Business Publishers conference held in Washington last week.

“Morning Roundup,” the free e-newsletter of business-related articles collected from a variety of news sources, received the gold award (first place) for best daily email among the 37 publications from the U.S., Canada and Australia that participated in the competition.

Journalism professors from the University of Missouri at Columbia who judged the entries said the e-newsletter written by Online Editor Lance Turner is “the perfect way to start the day!”

“The items are more than a linked headline, yet scannable: there’s enough there to hook the reader,” the judges said. “The Roundup is comprehensive, uses sharp writing to explain stories in detail and has links to more information for those that need it or desire more context.”

Greenhead, Arkansas Business Publishing Group’s annual duck-hunting magazine, received the gold award for best ancillary publication, its fifth award and second gold in this category. Associate Publisher Greg Churan, Editor Brent Birch, Managing Editor Todd Traub and Senior Designer Vince Palermo received praise from the judges for a publication that “scores high on uniqueness of the entry, recognizing that duck hunting is an important economic driver in the state of Arkansas.”

“The writing is stellar, both fun and authoritative,” according to the judges. “This was a thoughtful magazine, targeting duck hunters as well as advertisers who wouldn’t be core advertisers in the parent publication. Strong visuals are an added bonus.”

Arkansas Business also received a silver award for best use of multimedia for a feature called “Dogpatch Dreams,” which was written by Senior Editor George Waldon and designed for the web by Turner, Jonathan Peoples, Palermo and Deputy Online Editor Tre Baker.

“This nice parallax experience uses photography and fun YouTube clips to take the reader back in time in Arkansas. The photography is massive allowing every beautiful detail to be soaked in. This is an enterprising story that gives a great look at local history and tells the story behind the story.”

The winner in the multimedia category, which was open to business publications of all sizes, was Crain’s Chicago Business.

Senior Editor Mark Friedman took home a silver award in the best scoop category among mid-size business journals for a story about the paper trail that federal prosecutors followed that led to an illegal sports bookmaking operation in northwest Arkansas.

“Good business reporters get big scoops when they keep their eyes on the courts,” the judges noted. “Mr. Friedman spotted a federal forfeiture case in which a financial adviser’s odd bank transactions lead to indictments, still under seal when the journal reported them, for illegal gambling and money laundering. They beat the competition by more than four days.”

Gwen Moritz, editor of Arkansas Business, received the silver award for best bylined commentary in the mid-size division after winning gold in the same category last year.

“In her columns, Moritz takes deep looks at developments from near and afar that hit home for her readers. In one novel column about Amazon, she speculates how the online retailer may reshape the economy, much the way the state’s own Wal-Mart did decades before.”