JEFFERSON CITY – Going up against media outlets like Christianity Today and agencies like the International Mission Board, the staff of The Pathway recently brought home seven awards for journalism excellence.
The Evangelical Press Association (EPA) and the Baptist Communicators Association (BCA) both announced the winners of their annual competitions, and The Pathway took home awards for its design, writing and web site. The competitors in BCA include other denominational newspapers, as well as the public relations arms of SBC agencies, colleges and conventions. The competitors for EPA are a much wider range from all stripes of evangelicalism.
Kenny McCune, who lays out the print edition, maintains mbcpathway.com and developed the paper’s iPhone app, won an Award of Merit from EPA in the Newspaper – Portal Digital category. McCune’s work on the app earned a second place from BCA.
Brian Koonce, who has served as The Pathway’s staff writer for 10 years, won first place in news article – less than 1,000 words from BCA for a story detailing Missouri Baptists’ partnership with a tiny, typhoon-devastated island in the Philippines. Koonce also won a second place from BCA in the opinion/editorial category for his movie review of “Son of God.”
The newspaper staff as a whole placed third in the BCA contest for best State Baptist Newspaper, and third again in convergent communication (newspaper and website as a whole).
Dennis Fletcher, who draws The Pathway’s cartoon, won fifth place from EPA.
But this was not the only award-winning content that appeared in The Pathway’s pages in the last year, thought the staff in Jefferson City cannot take credit for it. In its coverage of the ongoing turmoil in Ferguson, The Pathway staff chose and licensed a photo by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer that helped that paper win the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography last week. The photo, which showed a protestor throwing a flaming tear gas canister back at police, became one of the most iconic of the 19 photos the paper summited to the Pulitzer committee.