Professional honors aren’t a key motivation for what we do at the Chinook Observer — but we enjoy them anyway.

I haven’t kept an exact count, but the Observer has won in the vicinity of 500 awards in my time as editor — a credit to the talented people who have fulfilled Pacific County’s information needs in the past three decades.

The Better Newspaper Contest is the main forum in which non-daily publications compete. In Washington state, winners are told in July that we’ve won in various broad categories, partly as an inducement to attend the annual Washington Newspaper Publishers Association convention in early October, when specific awards are announced.

Last week, the Observer was told we’ve won one or more awards in the following divisions of the 2023 Better Newspaper Contest: General Excellence, Special Sections, News, Photography.

General Excellence is the highest award presented to Washington newspapers, representing the best of the industry. The Observer has won outright for three years in a row.

Staff members and contributors whose latest entries placed 1st, 2nd or 3rd in various categories are:

Brandon Cline, Cate Gable, Donella Lucero, Jeff Clemens, John Bruijn, Jonathan Williams, Lissa Brewer, Luke Whittaker, Patrick Webb and Randy Wrighthouse.

I’m so proud of them all! Some are front-line content producers whose names you see all the time, while others work behind the scenes. They all help make the Observer the best it can be.

We can’t to any of it without your support. Thank you!