Chad Selweski of The Macomb Daily took first place for
column writing on Wednesday at the annual Society of Professional Journalists’ (Detroit
area chapter) “Excellence in Media” awards banquet.
Competing in Category B for newspapers with circulation
of less than 100,000, Selweski was singled out for three of his 2013 columns,
which were published in print, on macombdaily.com and on his blog,
macombpolitics.blogspot.com.
One column detailed the efforts by Warren Mayor Jim Fouts
to spy on his political enemies. A second column explained how Michigan’s K-12
students lag far behind their counterparts across the globe on test scores. The
third piece focused on the hate speech and white supremacist roots of an
infamous Facebook post by Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema.
Other SPJ award winners from The Macomb Daily were:
feature writer Gina Joseph, outdoors writer Don Gardner, photographer Dave
Dalton and graphics artist Kevin Martin.
*****
Some of my favorite moments of the night …
Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press winning in
Class A for best columnist. Bridge Magazine capturing several awards for their in-depth, long-form online journalism. Crain’s Detroit Business, which has been home over
the years to many Macomb Daily alumni, taking home a stack of awards thanks in
part to the leadership of managing editor Jennette Helen once-a-Jones Smith Kotila (Sounds like royalty ;-]). And former Free
Press reporter Steve Neavling winning recognition for his self-starter efforts
that led to the Motor City Muckraker website.
I also need to tell you that Jim Schaefer of the Free
Press is a bad, bad man. Bad.