Cbus hosts 2016 SPJ Awards fete

  • Anne Evans, co-founder of ColumbusUnderground.com and TheMetropreneur.com collects Digital Media division first place awards for the local online media outlets, from contest committee member Tony Kozlowski, in the Best Medical/Science Story (Jesse Bethea) and Best Photography (Lillian Dent) categories.

Nearly 100 of Ohio’s top journalists attended the 2016 SPJ Awards/Ohio’s Best Journalism luncheon Saturday, Aug. 27 at The Boat House restaurant in Columbus.

The Ohio’s Best Journalism contest is staged annually by the state’s three Society of Professional Journalists chapters — of Central Ohio, Cincinnati and Cleveland. The SPJ Awards banquet rotates among the three cities, with Columbus hosting this year’s event and Cleveland set to host in 2017.

A total of 652 entries were submitted in the 20th annual staging of the contest. Top work  for the 2015 calendar year was recognized in several divisions: College, Digital Media, Print (more than 75,000 circulation and less than 75,000 circulation classes) Freelance Print, Freelance Digital, Radio, Television, and Trade Publications.

Additional Digital and Freelance categories were added this year to reflect the changing journalism profession.

A total 312 winners were chosen across all divisions and categories. Special thanks to this year’s contest judges, members of the Long Island Press Club.

From the Central Ohio SPJ Board of Directors, congratulations to all the 2016 winners!

We hope you enjoy this slideshow of images from the awards banquet, Check out the full winners list at OhioSPJAwards.org.