Florida Weekly writers, designers win top honors

Florida Weekly took home 11 awards Saturday at the Florida Press Association's 2008 Better Weekly Newspaper Awards ceremony in Palm Beach. Judges singled out Florida Weekly for overall graphic design

(first place), general excellence (second place) and front-page makeup (second place). "Our design staff works hard to create the best weekly news product in Florida," said Creative Director Jim Dickerson. "These awards are testament to their professionalism."

Writers Evan Williams and Artis Henderson won first-place awards for business writing and humorous column, respectively. Second-place honors went to Roger Williams for community history, Nancy Stetson for criticism, Evan Williams for best obituary by a newspaper, and the Florida Weekly staff for the feature story and Web site development categories. Betsy Clayton and Evan Williams won an honorable mention for outdoors writing.

"We have a simple philosophy: Hire the best journalists, couple them with the best design team and create an interesting, professionally produced newspaper every week," said Jeffrey Cull, executive editor. "Being singled out by our peers for these awards makes us all very proud of the work we do."

Florida Weekly publishes weekly newspapers in Greater Fort Myers, Greater Naples and Punta Gorda/ southern Charlotte County with a combined circulation of nearly 50,000.

Other local winners included: the

Collier Citizen in Naples, with three

awards; Gulf Coast Business Review ,

with two awards; and the Fort Myers

Beach Observer, with one award.

The Florida Press Association's Better Weekly Newspaper Awards are open to monthly, semi-monthly, weekly, semi-weekly and tri-weekly newspaper members. The latest awards were presented for work published between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2008.