E-R earns 3 more awards in statewide competition
The Chico EnterpriseRecord picked up three more awards Friday in the 2021 California Journalism Awards competition.
For the second year in a row, editor Mike Wolcott took second place in the state for best column writing with his weekly “Editor’s Notes” column. His entries in the contest were “RIP Joe Schmoe, and thanks for the memory” and “The day the cattle danced in the rain.”
The Enterprise-Record was also honored for editorial writing, taking two of the top five awards in the category.
The Nov. 10, 2021 editorial “Local moves that don’t pass the test,” which criticized the latest in a longrunning series of local recall attempts, was awarded fourth place. The editorial noted “Elections have consequences, and if voters aren’t happy with the consequences, they get to vote for somebody else in the next election — not erase the will of the voters in the last one. … More divisiveness is the last thing this city needs right now.”
The April 25, 2021 editorial “This judge gets it; now it’s Chico’s turn,” placed fifth. The editorial called on Chico to “accept reality” following a federal court ruling in the Warren vs. Chico case: “Far too many people in Chico don’t get it. (Judge England) tore into some false narratives making the rounds (and) said the city needs to do a better job of making sure its constituents understand the law.”
Both editorials were written by the Enterprise-Record’s 2021 editorial board which included Wolcott and editorial board members Rick Silva, Sharon Martin, John Blacklock and Mandy Feder-Sawyer.
The three awards bring the E-R’s total to six in the annual CJA contest. Previously, this newspaper placed fifth for Public Service Journalism for our “Why we (still) love Chico” series; and took both third and fourth place in Wildfire Feature coverage with stories by Natalie Hanson (“A second tragedy: Facing theft after the North Complex fires”) and Martin (“When the Dixie Fire threatened, 8 men fought to save 154-year-old California barn.”)