Advertiser wins 14 top awards in statewide SPJ competition
By John Windrow
Advertiser Staff Writer
The Honolulu Advertiser took 14 top awards, including first-place public service honors, in Hawai'i's Excellence in Journalism Awards sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin won eight top prizes.
The Advertiser also was a finalist in 18 categories, while the Star-Bulletin had 16 finalists.
First place in public service reporting went to former Advertiser Big Island bureau reporter Kevin Dayton, reporter Rob Perez and photographer Jeff Widener for "Crossing the Line: Abuse in Hawai'i Homes."
Dayton, Widener and page designer Russell McCrory won first place in the Special Section Category for "Daysha's Diary," a series on Daysha Aiona-Aka, a 21-year-old mother killed by her estranged boyfriend.
Dayton also took first place in Feature Writing/Long Form for "Daysha's Diary."
The Advertiser swept the General News/Enterprise Reporting category, winning first place for its coverage of the January 2008 tragedy in which toddler Cyrus Belt was thrown to his death from an H-1 Freeway overpass.
Finalist recognition in that category was given to Will Hoover for his coverage of Barack Obama's Hawai'i background in "Obama Slept Here," and to Ferd Lewis for his coverage of the University of Hawai'i's list of its traveling party for the 2008 Sugar Bowl.
The newspaper also swept the three first-place awards for online news, for the Dec. 26, 2008, islandwide blackout (spot news), "Diabetes: Hawai'i's Hidden Epidemic" (general news) and "Crossing the Line: Abuse in Hawai'i Homes" (multimedia presentation).
The Advertiser also won first place in:
No awards were presented in the student print category because of controversy surrounding the accuracy of stories submitted by the University of Hawai'i-Manoa student newspaper Ka Leo O Hawai'i.
The editors have said they cannot verify the identities of 29 people quoted in 14 stories written by former reporter Kris DeRego. DeRego maintains his stories were accurate as submitted and blamed the situation on editing errors.
