Possibly you noticed that the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup on Monday night. A fabulous third win in six years. Now that’s pretty good.
Here at the hyperlocal news desk, though, we feel compelled to report, even though we are modest folk, that Wednesday Journal also brought home a big, shiny trophy last week. The Will Loomis Memorial Trophy was presented to the Journal by the Illinois Press Association at a luncheon, Friday, in the surprisingly appealing town of Bloomington. Yes, that is in Illinois. Possibly south of Roosevelt Road.
It recognizes the Journal as the top large circulation weekly in the state. And this would be the second year in a row we’ve won the Loomis. No, make that the third year in a row. And six times since 2007. Not that we are making any direct or disparaging comparisons to the Hawks and their every other year sort of phoning it in approach to trophies.
Now the Loomis Trophy is all pointy eagles and Olympian types in loin cloths — yeah, I know, you think all of us newspaper guys are over the hill, but we’ve got a loin-clothed Olympian deep inside us. My point is that you can’t drink soda out of the Loomis. Thank God for Sonic and those 48-oz. Lime-Aids on the thirsty way home.
Did I mention that the Journal also won the General Excellence prize and 24 other back-slaps for things like the Viewpoints section, photos, sports, design, columns, news reporting and special sections. Or that our paper in Forest Park also won General Excellence in a smaller circulation category, and had the best Website. Not to mention the honors captured by our paper on the West Side, the Austin Weekly News, and the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark. Fifty wins among the papers.
And don’t get me started on the Advertising and Marketing Awards where, a day earlier, the Journal and the Austin Weekly News also won General Excellence.
We’d like to thank our parents. And all the little people, including the lumberjacks who cut down the trees, so they could be pulped and transformed into award-winning journalism. Do recycle.
You know, of course, how sincerely honored each of us feels about this recognition. While we know that awards can be a fickle process from year to year, if over time you win regularly, you know that your peers recognize your hard work and that is gratifying.
More gratifying is when the people who rely on our efforts each day and each week— readers and advertisers both — let us know that they appreciate what we do. And also when they care enough to tell us that we have erred.
These are great and fascinating days in the local news and commerce business. We are proud of the work we do. We are excited to be in a business that is changing in profound ways but that, in elemental ways related to making connections between people, is just the same and just as essential as always.
We are all about the power of connection. We’re powerful on the printed page. We’re powerful on digital platforms. On social platforms. We’re powerful face-to-face in each community we serve. Put all of those together and our reach, our hold, our impact on our towns is, far and away, more powerful than it has ever been.
That makes these heady times for each of us at Wednesday Journal and it brings out the loin-clothed Olympian in each of us for damned sure.
