Almanac staff wins four Keystone awards
The Almanac won four Keystone Press Awards last month in the largest circulation division for weekly publications.
Sports editor Eleanor Bailey won first place awards for best sports story and sports beat reporting.
Bailey’s sports story, ”No More Field of Dreams,” chronicled Seton-La Salle student Liam Sweeney, who was “millimeters away” from being paralyzed while playing football for the school in 2015. Tests and an MRI showed he had stenosis, along with a spinal cord bruise and herniated disc, prompting surgery to fuse two discs in his vertebrae. Sweeney, a senior last year, also was a member of the baseball, but he could no longer play because of his injury.
Bailey also won best sports beat reporting for her coverage of local high school athletes who went on to achieve at higher levels, including Mt. Lebanon native Leah Smith, who won gold and bronze in swimming at the 2016 Olympics, and Austin Kitchen, a Mt. Lebanon grad who won the College World Series last year with Coastal Carolina.
Staff writer Harry Funk won first place in the video story category for his ”Electrify Your Strings” that showcased a program founded by Mark Wood, a violinist with the Trans Siberian Orchestra band, that allowed Bethel Park students to perform with professional musician Haydn Vitera. About 100 members of the high school orchestra, along with two-dozen eighth-graders, joined Vitera for the electrifying performance.
Staff writer Luke Campbell received an honorable mention for his series on South Fayette that showed how the township is dealing with explosive business and residential growth. The five-part ”Not the South Fayette of Old” series examined the township’s current business climate, housing boom, traffic congestion and school district taxes and how those factors will be balanced with future growth.
The Keystone Press Awards, organized by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, honor reporters and media outlets for excellence in journalism. An awards ceremony will be held May 20 during the Pennsylvania Press Conference in Lancaster, Pa.