In addition to the usual parking tickets and hate mail, the Weekly Planet staff has been receiving a lot of plaques lately.
When the Society of Professional Jour- nalists' Mid-Florida Chapter held its 2000 awards ceremony this spring, several Planeteers were honored in the category of Small Circulation publications (under 100,000). The main competition in this category came from the Tampa Bay Business Journal and the Bradenton Herald. Former staff writer Lynn Waddell took home an Award of Excellence for "The New Media Monster," about corporate ownership in media, and former Weekly Planet Sarasota editor Andrea Brunais won an Honorable Mention for "Beat the Clock," about an anti-aging conference in Las Vegas.
Brunais also won an Outstanding Achievement award for her columns in the category of, why yes, Columns. In Criticism, Food and Wine Editor Bonnie Boots and recently departed Music Critic Stefanie Kalem received an Award of Excellence and Honorable Mention, respectively, for their kick-butt analyses.
A little less close to home, our critics once again racked up honors when SPJ held its sixth annual Sunshine State Awards, a statewide competition, June 9 at the Fort Lauderdale Sheraton Airport hotel. Performance Critic Mark E. Leib won a whopping first place in the category of Critical Writing/Review for Small Newspapers, and Kalem once again came in a respectable third.
WP Art Director Todd "Scooter" Bates won Third Place for Excellence in Front Page Design, Small Newspapers, and he will also have a cover featured in Print magazine's regional design annual in September.
Finally, yours truly won a little certificate from the USF Science Journalism Center a few months back for ongoing water coverage. Since I never water my pretty brown lawn, it must have been in recognition of my extensive water writings, which I write, like, at least every week. I wonder if they will count this mention of water toward next year's competition?
—David Jasper
Contact David Jasper at 813-248-8888, ext. 111, or jasper@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jul 18-24, 2001.
