| Rank | Newspaper Name | City | Author | Title | Judge's Note |
| General News Reporting | |||||
| 1st | The Observer-News-Enterprise | Newton | Staff | Opium Murders | |
| 2nd | The McDowell News | Marion | Richelle Bailey | Murder On Stacy Hill | |
| 3rd | Sun Journal | New Bern | Nikie Mayo | Bev Perdue's Inauguration Weekend | |
| Deadline News Reporting | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | Graham Cawthon & Olivia Neeley | Shootout | I thought the story had a tremendous impact and I admired the depth of coverage. |
| 2nd | The Daily Courier | Forest City | Jean Gordon | Museum Destroyed | I thought the coverage was outstanding. The fire did not have the impact of the police shootout though. |
| 3rd | The Star | Shelby | David Allen | Toddler Killed | Once again, good coverage by this paper. It was an important story to break. |
| Online Breaking News | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | Staff | Storm Tears Up County | |
| 2nd | The Star | Shelby | David Allen & Jeff Melton | Fire In The Hole | |
| 3rd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Gordon Anderson, Ashley Garner & Billy Liggett | Toddler Shot, Killed | |
| News Feature | |||||
| 1st | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | R.V. Hight | Easing The Pain | A timely topic, giving voice to and putting a face on war. |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Jonathan Owens | Faces Of The Jobless | Good enterprise reporting. |
| 3rd | The Star | Shelby | Olivia Neeley | Lost All Hope | One of those hard to find stories handled well. |
| Feature Writing | |||||
| 1st | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Mike Hixenbaugh | Veteran Wants State To Replace License Plate | Humorous feature, excellent quotes placed stratigically throughout well-written prose. |
| 2nd | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Robert Kelly-Goss | The Lesson Was Racism Is Wrong | Important story. Most breaking color line stories are opposite but the lesson remains the same. |
| 3rd | The Star | Shelby | David Allen | Life Of Police Informant | Interesting features about people who have changed their ways and are wanting to make a difference. |
| Profile Feature | |||||
| 1st | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Erin Zureick | A Way With Words | |
| 2nd | The Courier-Tribune | Asheboro | Chip Womick | She Has A Mission, As Well | |
| 3rd | The Robesonian | Lumberton | John Charles Robbins | Local Doctor's Effort | |
| News Enterprise and Investigative Reporting | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | Olivia Neeley & David Allen | 2-Year Old Murder Series | Excellent report, newspapers and reporters showed diligence in trying to bring light to an issue that is often done behind closed doors. |
| 2nd | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Mike Hixenbaugh | Victims In Life, Death | Well-written series helps communities, families find justice and makes public aware of this horrendous arrest. |
| 3rd | The Daily Record | Dunn | Brian Haney | Price Of Leadership | Great FOIA reporting. People deserve to know what their commissioners are being paid to do. |
| Business Writing | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | Olivia Neeley | Ultimate Concerts | Neely provided readers with an exceptionally compelling look at 2 company's pie-in-the-sky promises. It was thoroughly reported with interviews and record searches. She managed to capture the emotional roller-coaster of hopes over thousands of new jobs and disappointment in the end. |
| 2nd | The Star | Shelby | Jon Jimison | Apple | Lots of good work in this neighbor vs neighbor battle, esp in the special report. |
| 3rd | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Laura Mcfarland | Too Slow Season | Well-written examination of sometimes-overlooked consequence of the recession. |
| Sports News Reporting | |||||
| 1st | The Dispatch | Lexington | Mike Duprez | Pompey's Late Kick | Great play-by-play of nail-biter. |
| 2nd | The Free Press | Kinston | David Hall | Miller, Grangier Stadium Fixture, Dead | Details make readers feel they knew this man. Good job! |
| 3rd | The Free Press | Kinston | David Hall | Pirates Lose Thriller | |
| Sports Feature Writing | |||||
| 1st | The Courier-Tribune | Asheboro | Megan Crotty | Local Golfer Playing To Win | |
| 2nd | The Daily Dispatch | Henderson | Eric S. Robinson | Karate Kid | |
| 3rd | Washington Daily News | Washington | Brian Haines | The Return Of Lil' Pomp | |
| General News Photography | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | Jeff Melton | Storm Tears Up County | Melton took an unusual approach: a wide-angle look at a burning house with a stripped-down fireman in the foreground. This made this disaster photo stand out in a crowd of submitted disaster photos. Melton's depth of field image on the front page went beyond solid spot news coverage to something more iconic. Good work. |
| 2nd | The Daily Courier | Forest City | Garrett Byers | Lumber Yard Ablaze | Byers' multiple images of the Carpenter Design fire did a fine job of capturing the scope, intensity and grittiness of this very large industrial fire. All three front page photos worked well to tell the story. Readers could almost feel the heat as they r |
| 3rd | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Ben Goff | Locked Out | Goff did a good job getting his camera in the right place at the right time to capture the emotion - and the hand motion - of a worker locked out from her job at the QVC Distribution Center. Good active, emotional spot news image. |
| Feature Photography | |||||
| 1st | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Alan Campbell | Spring Bubbles | This is a very appealing image that was correctly played large on the front page. The shallow depth of field telephoto lens made the back-lit, out-of-focus bubbles between the camera and the subject take on the shape of the lense aperture, and the resulting pink and green spots floating through the image gives this a fantasy feeling that captures the wonder that we all remember from blowing soap bubbles as children. This image required a good eye, camera skill and foresight - or some really good luck! In either case, it's a winner. |
| 2nd | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Brett Clark | Ready For Some Downtime | A wonderful photo that made me chuckle the second I opened the page. This is a terrific example of feature photojournalism because this is one of those images that can't be staged or repeated - capturing the moment that the cat got his paws on the rescuer's rope makes this image work. Nice job of holding shadow details like the cat's eyes. |
| 3rd | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Brett Clark | Casting Call | This is a very appealing silhouette with strong contrast and saturated colors. Capturing the throw net mid air really makes this image sing. The off-kilter horizon bothers me a bit - especially with a water image - because I got the feeling that Currituck Sound is going to run out the bottom right corner of the photo. This photo has plenty going for it. |
| Sports Photography | |||||
| 1st | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Justin Falls | Eagles Get By Panthers | Justin Falls did an outstanding job of capturing the emotion - and maybe the anguish - of a wrestling move that resulted in an injury. His shallow depth of field made the background soft which draws the reader's eye to the face of wrestler James Scott - exactly where the reader's eye should be going. Very dramatic image. Good work! |
| 2nd | The Daily Dispatch | Henderson | Ashley Steven Ayscue | Northern; Webb Battle | Everybody who saw this photo in our office winced. The impact of the soccer ball flattening out on Hannah Perkinson's face just had to hurt. Ayscue's timing was perfect - talk about the peak of action! |
| 3rd | The Wilson Daily Times | Wilson | Michael Lindsay | Cardinals Shock Fike | Lindsay was in the right place at the right tmie to capture Fike's girls soccer players in the posture of defeat, while members of Jacksonville's squad hug in celebration. It's an image that strongly tells a story. The color balance looked a bit off, and had Lindsay been shooting for another paper, the shallow focus would have been better on the winners, sandwiched between two fuzzy losers. But this photo does an excellent job of telling the emotional story of winners and losers on the soccer field. |
| Photo Page | |||||
| 1st | Sun Journal | New Bern | Byron Holland | Cherry Point Air Show | Byron did a good job of making dynamic, attention-grabbing images of the air show by using a number of different lenses effectively. The wide angle shot of the top image, the very interesting reflection in the propeller cone shot, the telephoto shots of planes in the air, the kid looking out of the pilot's window and the man reading. Excellent! |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Brooke Wolfe | Fall's Splendor | This is a beautiful package of landscape and nature photos that I bet readers really enjoyed. The images are all well-composed, colors are brilliant and the different viewpoints, subject and distance to the subject kept what could have been a "shallow' collection very interesting. The use of poems about fall on both pages was appropriate given the topic. |
| 3rd | The Star | Shelby | Brittany Randolph | Cleansed By Waters | Brittany did a good job of telling a story with her camera. The images were all well-cropped and composed. A couple of critiques: for such a potentially emotional subject, these images looked emotionally flat to me. Granted, a photojournalist is there to capture what occurs, but I bet there ware some tears, hugs and big smiles associated with this event that didn't show up on the photo page. But the photos used were all different and did a good job of telling the story of a river baptism. Nice work. |
| Illustration/Photo Illustration | |||||
| 1st | The Daily Courier | Forest City | Garrett Byers | Summer Myths | Catchy, clever and well-thought out illustration. Compliments important ??? |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Billy Liggett | Techno Notes | Fine and colorful way to draw readers into story. |
| 3rd | Sun Journal | New Bern | Byron Holland | Economy Blues | Interesting. Sets the mood for the story. |
| Best Video | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | David Allen | Summer Storm | Great use of graphics, raw video and interviews. Video was edited well. Narrartor was a little dry but it gets the job done. Length of video was a concern, however. |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Billy Liggett & Jonathan Owens | Ghost Hunting | Very interesting story. Background music set the tone. Video helped tell this story by showing what they did. Video probably could be edited more. Nine minutes is too long for internet. |
| 3rd | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Mike Hixenbaugh | Faces Of Recession: Great Day Café | Good editing and good story. One thing to watch is the dramatic change in volume. Otherwise a good video. |
| Best Use of an Interactive Feature | |||||
| 1st | Statesville Record & Landmark | Statesville | Jessica Norman | 2009 Football Preview | A lot of cool features to get ready for the football season. |
| 2nd | The Star | Shelby | Emily Killian | Championship | Slide show of game photos and game sounds. Great features. It's no wonder that it got so many hits. |
| 3rd | The Star | Shelby | David Allen | Line Of Fire | Good way to show people where fires occurred and showing photos of the fires, too. |
| Best Multimedia Project | |||||
| 1st | The News Herald | Morganton | Erin Simpson, Jennifer Frew & Julie Chang | Red , White & Bluegrass | Great looking webpage with a lot of cool features and a very helpful website. Nice touch to include last years event. |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Staff | Lee Regional Fair | Nice idea to use a blog for the big event. Lots of features. Should be a very highly viewed internet multimedia feature. |
| 3rd | The Star | Shelby | Staff | Cleveland County Fair | Fantastic schedule. Nice page including photos and videos. |
| Editorials | |||||
| 1st | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Julian Eure | Property Rights | |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Billy Liggett | Census; Temple; Loophole | |
| 3rd | The Robesonian | Lumberton | Donnie Douglas | Abc; Hatcher; Sharpe | |
| Lighter Columns | |||||
| 1st | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Kristin Pitts | I'm No Batgirl | Interesting topics, and the columns get to the point quickly, making one want to keep reading. |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Billy Liggett | Beatles; Instructional; I'm On | Topics are timely and interesting. Writer does a good job of including his experiences without being overly personal. |
| 3rd | The Daily Courier | Forest City | Abbe Byers | All Work And No Skip | Good insight into the world of newspapers makes readers feel more a part of the operation. |
| Serious Columns | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | Skip Foster | Who Got Killed? | Foster masterfully tells the story of society's acceptance of violence through the eyes of a 7-year-old. Well done. |
| 2nd | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Kristin Pitts | The Power Of One Book | Pitts sends powerful message to readers about censorship. |
| 3rd | The Courier-Tribune | Asheboro | Bob Williams | The Force; She Shunned; Anonymous | Great tribute to the everyday hero found in all of our communities. |
| Sports Columns | |||||
| 1st | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Will Harris | Assorted: Will Harris | Great leads, variety of topics covered. Ideas flowed well for all readers to enjoy whether sports fans or not. |
| 2nd | The Free Press | Kinston | Ryan Herman | Two Different; Today; Other Kids | |
| 3rd | The Free Press | Kinston | David Hall | Playing What If | |
| Criticism | |||||
| 1st | The Free Press | Kinston | Jon Dawson | Cd Reviews | Clear, consice reviews with thoughtful insights and clever phrasing. |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Faith Swymer | Hamlet; Little Women; Christmas | Gives readers the information they need and want about local plays in entertaining way. |
| 3rd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Neil Morris | Watchmen; District 9; 500 Days | |
| Headline Writing | |||||
| 1st | The Wilson Daily Times | Wilson | Staff | Pizza Man Delivers Beating | Great headlines. Got my attention from the start. Had to read the stories with the headlines. |
| 2nd | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Jonathan Owens | Bailamos; That's Amora; Dog Days | Clever play on baby's name. Had me humming "That's amore" all day long. Certainly attracted interest to the story. |
| 3rd | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Bob Montgomery | Albemarle Goes Better With Coke | It does go better with Coke. Great headline to draw attention to the story. |
| Graphics | |||||
| 1st | The Wilson Daily Times | Wilson | Abby Westcott | Alcosensor | Outstanding work. Clear, colorful, interesting and easy-to-follow. A perfect tandem to the story. These are what graphics should be. |
| 2nd | The Free Press | Kinston | Richard Clark | All Free; Headed To; What Is | |
| 3rd | The Wilson Daily Times | Wilson | Allison Moore | Mid Decade | |
| General Excellence Web | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | Staff | ||
| 2nd | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Staff | ||
| 3rd | Sun Journal | New Bern | Staff | ||
| Appearance and Design | |||||
| 1st | Statesville Record & Landmark | Statesville | Staff | March 11 & 12, 2009 | Well balanced, appealing design with good use of color and art. |
| 2nd | The Dispatch | Lexington | Staff | December 24 & 25, 2008 | Nice blend of art, color, graphics to draw reader into paper. |
| 3rd | The McDowell News | Marion | Staff | March 19 & 20, 2009 | White space, attractive presentation grabs attention. |
| Sports Coverage | |||||
| 1st | The Star | Shelby | Sports Staff | November 18 & 19, 2008 | Nice use of graphics to tell the story. Good layout. Good variety of sports, including a good number of local stories. |
| 2nd | Sun Journal | New Bern | Staff | May 23 & 24, 2009 | Good variety of sports. Cutout of track athlete was nice. Good local coverage. |
| 3rd | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Staff | November 14 & 15, 2008 | Good analysis of high school football and coverage of local sports. Good calendar. |
| News Section Design | |||||
| 1st | The Dispatch | Lexington | Staff | October 25 & 28, 2008 | Simplicity makes the design effective. Bold headlines and large photographs stand out, make stories easily discernable. |
| 2nd | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Staff | July 19 & 20, 2009 | White space around flag makes newspaper name stand out. Lots of information presented without appearing crowded. |
| 3rd | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Jenny Covault & Chris Day | July 14 & 15, 2009 | Impressive use of photographs. Left rail information easy to understand. |
| Feature Section Design | |||||
| 1st | The Sanford Herald | Sanford | Jonathan Owens | Carolina Section | Crisp design. Surrounded by useful information like "Your Weekend." Great columnists. Overall solid design. |
| 2nd | The Star | Shelby | Lifestyles Staff | Giving For God | Nice illustrations a plus. Well-written headlines, solid, crisp design throughout. |
| 3rd | The Dispatch | Lexington | Staff | Living Low | Nice, large photographs throughout. Good inside pages. |
| Special Section | |||||
| 1st | Rocky Mount Telegram | Rocky Mount | Staff | Remembering Hurricane Floyd | |
| 2nd | Observer News Enterprise | Newton | Staff | Profile 2009: Going Green | |
| 3rd | The Daily Advance | Elizabeth City | Staff | Albemarle Charm | |
