Mountain Xpress won first place in two categories in this year’s N.C. Press Awards: Education Reporting and General Excellence for Newspaper Websites.
Carrie Eidson earned first in the Education Reporting category for “The ‘Good Kids’ School,” which highlighted the teens at Community High School in Swannanoa. “There are good things happening at Community High,” Eidson reported in November 2013. “The school met state-mandated progress goals for end-of-course test scores. And [it] has college-level Advanced Placement classes, something only a handful of alternative high schools in North Carolina offer.”
In April 2014, Xpress launched its new website, thanks to webmaster Kyle Kirkpatrick, then-staffer Brad Messenger and Stefan Colosimo in I.T. (as well as plenty of input from the community, publisher Jeff Fobes, and Xpress staff). The association recognized the new site for “successfully [fulfilling] its unique editorial mission [and] effectively [serving] its audience.” The NCPA noted that mountainx.com “maximizes the unique abilities of the Internet and represents the highest journalistic standards.” Sites were judged on excellence of content, interactivity, design, navigation and community tools.
And Arts & Entertainment Editor Alli Marshall earned second place for her Feb. 2014 cover story about local, independent presses, “Pressing Matters.”
Kudos to our winners, their commitment to community journalism and their excellence.
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