Enterprise-Leader Earns First In General Excellence

For the second consecutive year, the Washington County Enterprise-Leader has won first place in the general excellence category for smaller weekly newspapers from the Arkansas Press Association.

Awards were announced June 25 at the organization’s annual convention, held this year in Bentonville.

The Enterprise- Leader won a total of 14 awards: three first-place awards, five second-place awards, two third-place awards and four as honorable mention.

Lynn Kutter with the Enterprise- Leader won first place for the best beat reporting category for articles on law enforcement in Farmington, Prairie Grove and Lincoln. She also won first place for agriculture and business coverage in western Washington County and first place for a feature photo of a young girl checking out her candy stash at the 2015 Easter Eggstravaganza in Farmington.

Former sports reporter Mark Humphrey won second- place awards for in- depth reporting on a Farmington basketball player who collapsed during a game, for sports news story “Greek Lightning” and for best sports page.

Kutter won second-place awards for coverage of tourism and coverage of health and medical issues in the three communities.

Columnist Maylon Rice won second- place for news/political column for “Open Carry Makes Most Folks Nervous.”

Ben Madrid, a former writer for the paper, won second-place for freelance writing, “Lady Tigers Claim Tiara.”

Publisher Kent Marts thanked the paper staff for their award-winning work.

“The people of west Washington County are blessed to have such great journalists working at the Washington County Enterprise-Leader,” Marts said. “Lynn Kutter, Mark Humphrey and Mike Capshaw work hard to cover the communities. Seeing Mark leave was sad, but replacing him with Mike continued coverage where Mark left off.”

In all, 19 smaller weekly newspapers in Arkansas submitted 513 entries from papers published in 2015.