The Gloucester Daily Times and its affiliated Cape Ann Magazine are New England award winners — again.
Times and Cape Ann magazine staffers took home six awards last weekend from the annual New England Newspaper and Press Association's Better Newspaper Contest awards dinner at the Park Plaza hotel in Boston, including a first-place award for page design for Times night and design editor Andrea Holbrook.
Holbrook — who coordinates many of the Times features pages and regularly designs the Times' front page, among other duties — captured first prize in the Times' circulation category for designing the best food page or section in the Times' circulation category for daily newspapers.
Holbrook, who also earned third place honors for her designs of another food section and for an Arts and Entertainment section, captured her first place honors for her design of the Oct. 20 Taste of the Times section, which featured Essex cook Laurie Lufkin sharing recipes for Mushrooms Marsala and other appetizers. (Click here to see the page.)
The front section page — like all Taste of the Times pages — included directions linking readers to an online cooking demonstration by Lufkin at gloucestertimes.com, complete with QR code symbols that allow readers to access the video by simply moving their "smart phones" over the printed page.
"Local, local, local — tasty choices with prep details and how to," the contest judges noted in their critique. "Cooking made easier for the reader. Great approach using online as part of the reader experience — draws reader into page with close-up photo details."
Beyond Holbrook's first-place and two third-place honors, staff writer Gail McCarthy captured a second-place award in the category of History reporting for her March 3 story headlined, "A different World War II diary" about Jacqueline Mallen of Rockport. (See related story.)
Mallen had just published her first book, "Diary of a French Girl," and McCarthy's story intertwined elements of the book with her own interview of Mallen, who shared with pride her many documents related to that time, including a small certificate stating she was a member of the Resistance, her French air force credentials and her American citizenship papers, of which she is most proud
Cape Ann magazine and Editor Tracey Rauh also earned a second place in the category for best special section for the autumn edition that focused on the 20-year anniversary of the 1991 so-called "Perfect Storm," the loss of the fishing vessel Andrea Gail and crew, and its ongoing effect on Gloucester.
The contest judges noted that "a compelling 20-year retrospective is the centerpiece focusing on the enormous storm that made meteorological history, spawned the Hollywood blockbuster movie and put Cape Ann and Gloucester on the map and Andrea Gail and its crew into the annals of maritime tragedy."
The Times' other third-place award was in the category for best sports column. Former Times Sports Editor Matt Burke, who left the Times in December to become sports editor of The Metro in Boston, won for a piece he wrote on the local sports community's need for support in the wake of longtime Gloucester High track coach Jim Munn's death, and the news that retired Gloucester High School football coach Paul Ingram had been diagnosed with cancer. (See related story.)
The awards are the latest in a series of honors captured by the Times, including the 2009 NENPA honor as New England Newspaper of the Year.
Holbrook, McCarthy and Times Publisher Mark Zappala all attended the awards dinner.
The event annually honors journalists and publications from across the six-state region.
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