The Lewiston Sun Journal and the Maine Sunday Telegram have been named the daily and weekend Newspapers of the Year, respectively, in the Maine Press Association’s 2012 Better Newspaper Contest.

The Mount Desert Islander of Bar Harbor was named Newspaper of the Year in the competition for weeklies with circulation of 4,000 or more, and the York County Coast Star of Kennebunk won the award in the competition for smaller papers.

The winners were announced Oct. 13 during the MPA’s annual Fall Conference at the Hilton Garden Inn in Freeport. The daylong conference drew nearly 200 people.

The Mount Desert Islander has now been named Newspaper of the Year in six of the last seven years. This was its first year competing in the Weekly 2 division, for the larger papers.

The Sun Journal’s award for general excellence in the daily division was its third in the last five years. The Telegram was named the weekend Newspaper of the Year for the second time in three years.

The MPA also gave its inaugural awards for Advertising General Excellence.

First place went to the Sun Journal in the daily and weekend divisions. The Ellsworth American won the competition for larger papers, and The Original Irregular of Kingfield took the award in the Weekly 1 division.

The Sun Journal was the winner of the Freedom of Information Award for daily and weekend papers, and The York Weekly won the award for weeklies.

A.M. Sheehan and Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, whose reporting for the weekly Advertiser Democrat of Norway exposed substandard conditions in public housing in western Maine, were named co-Journalists of the Year by the MPA. In introducing the winners, Ed Snook, publisher of the Advertiser Democrat, said, “Their investigative reports led to a series of changes and government investigations – from Augusta to our nation’s capital in Washington.”

Aislinn Sarnacki, who writes features for the Bangor Daily News, was the winner of the annual Bob Drake Young Writer’s Award.

Earlier in the day, the MPA inducted two new members to its Hall of Fame, Mary Brewer and Ann McGowan.

Brewer, who retired this year as managing editor of the Boothbay Register and Wiscasset Newspaper, worked for the weekly papers for more than 50 years. She was named Maine Journalist of the Year in 1984 and was the MPA’s president in 1982-83.

McGowan, who retired in 1996 as managing editor of the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, joined the Sentinel in 1961 and was one of the first women to be appointed managing editor of a daily newspaper in Maine.

The Hall of Fame, begun in 1998, honors people with Maine ties who have made outstanding contributions to the newspaper profession.

Mary Dodge Brewer, former managing editor of the Boothbay Register and Wiscasset Newspaper, and Ann B. McGowan, former managing editor of the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, have been selected as the 2012 inductees to the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame.

In nominating Mary Brewer, the newspapers’ Executive Editor R. Joseph Gelarden and Publisher A.R. Tandy wrote, “In her 50 plus years on the job, she demonstrated the finest characteristics of our profession: integrity, honesty, courage, hard work, and just plain common sense.”

Brewer, a 1959 graduate of Boothbay Region High School, joined the Register as a summer intern soon after completing her first year at the University of Maine, and began work full-time after graduating from the Katharine Gibbs school in Boston.

Under her leadership, the Register published major stories on such issues as the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant and covered town meetings, local businesses and community festivals. It has been reported that the late columnist and commentator Andy Rooney once said, “One of my favorite newspapers in the world is the Boothbay Register. … If I wanted to show someone in a foreign country what America was really like I’d buy them the Boothbay Register.”

Upon her retirement earlier this year, Brewer, who was president of the Maine Press Association in 1982-83 and Maine Journalist of the Year in 1984, told readers, “I’m firmly convinced that weekly newspapers provide something the dailies will never have; they are the history of a community and its people. Look through the papers of twenty, thirty, or fifty years ago and you’ll see what I mean.”

Ann McGowan joined the Morning Sentinel as a correspondent in 1961, at a time when contributors were paid 15 cents per column inch. She worked as the newspaper’s first full-time feature writer and was appointed features editor and a senior editor of MaineSay, the Sentinel’s statewide news magazine.

The longtime Pittsfield resident was named editorial page editor in 1990 and then became one of the first women to be appointed managing editor of a Maine daily newspaper. She won several awards from the Maine Press Association and the New England Associated Press, including a first-place writing award for a series on teenage drug abuse and a first-place award for the Sentinel’s editorial pages.

“Ann knew every job in the newsroom and was a great supervisor and role model because of it,” said reporter and columnist Amy Calder, who with Sentinel colleague Darla Pickett nominated McGowan. “She had great news sense and always remained cool when things got hectic. She always treated her superiors, peers and those she managed with great respect.”

McGowan retired in 1996. In her retirement, she has written a book on the history of Cianbro and served as chair of a successful fundraising campaign for the Pittsfield Public Library.

The Maine Press Association Hall of Fame was established in 1998 to honor newspaper journalists with Maine connections who have made outstanding contributions to the profession. With the 2012 inductions, the Hall of Fame will have 54 members.

The Hall of Fame luncheon and induction ceremony will be held Oct. 13 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Freeport as part of the annual Maine Press Association Fall Conference. To register for the Hall of Fame ceremony or the entire conference, contact mainepressmail@gmail.com

Wayne E. Rivet, the longtime editor of The Bridgton News, and his wife, Susan, have purchased the weekly newspaper from the Shorey family, which owned and operated it for more than 140 years.

Stephen Shorey, who joined the newspaper in 1973 and was publisher and president of the Bridgton News Corp., decided to retire this year. His search for a new owner led him to Rivet, who joined the staff in 1984 and worked his way up from general reporter to sports editor and then editor.

Under Rivet, The Bridgton News was named Newspaper of the Year among larger weeklies in the Maine Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. The paper won third-place awards for General Excellence in the 2010 and 2011 contests.

Shorey’s parents, the late Eula and Henry Shorey, were inducted into the MPA Hall of Fame in 1999.

In a story in The Bridgton News on July 26, Stephen Shorey’s sister Mary said, “During their lifetimes, and in particular the 1950s through the 1980s, my parents … focused much of their attention on the life of the town and the production of The Bridgton News. The paper was such a central part of our family’s existence that we often thought of it as a member of the family. … We are pleased that the BNews stayed a part of the Shorey family throughout my parents’ lifetimes and are equally pleased that it will stay in The Bridgton News family with ownership being passed down to someone who truly cares about the newspaper’s future and the town of Bridgton.”

In the same story, Rivet said, “We are truly blessed to be given this opportunity to carry forward the Shorey family’s tradition of journalistic integrity, the relentless drive to inform the reading public and a commitment to make a positive impact upon the community we serve. … I have the utmost respect for the high standards the Shorey family developed in over 100 years of ownership and will strive to produce a newspaper each week that reflects those qualities.”

Read the story in The Bridgton News.

Staffers from two MPA newspapers have been awarded a total of $500 in fellowship grants to attend professional training sessions.

The MPA board approved a $250 grant in May to help Sun Media Group, publisher of the Lewiston Sun Journal and Norway’s Advertiser Democrat, send Web Editor Pattie Reaves to a Poynter session, “Building News Applications With Data,” in June.

Also in June, Nick McCrea, a reporter for the Bangor Daily News, attended Investigative Reporters and Editors’ 2012 Conference in Boston, with help from a $250 fellowship grant.

The Calais Advertiser has become the newest member of the Maine Press Association. The weekly paper in Washington County was approved for membership by the MPA Board of Directors on March 22. A month earlier, Fiddlehead Focus of Fort Kent joined the MPA.

The association now has 30 members, including 23 weekly papers and seven dailies. To see The Calais Advertiser online, go to http://www.thecalaisadvertiser.com/

The MPA wants a Maine journalism student to join its Board of Directors.

The association’s bylaws provide for a student to be a nonvoting member of the board. For the MPA, it’s a chance to connect with student newspapers and involve someone who represents the future of the industry. For the student, it’s a chance to develop contacts with people in the business and learn more about how the industry works.

The board meets regularly throughout the year to organize events and set policy for the MPA. Its current student member, Michael Shepherd, editor of The Maine Campus, will graduate from the University of Maine in May. His successor will join the board by the start of the next school year.

If you’re interested in learning more or seeking this seat on the board, send an email telling us who you are and why you’re interested, to mainepressmail@gmail.com. For more information about the position, you can contact Michael Shepherd at mshepherd@mainecampus.com.

Fiddlehead Focus, a new print/web publication based in Fort Kent, has joined the MPA as a full member.

Fiddlehead Focus has been in business for 20 months, publishing a free six- to eight-page newspaper on tabloid sheets to report news from northern Aroostook County and invite readers to its website, www.fiddleheadfocus.com, which carries more news content. The newspaper can be downloaded from the website.

Andrew Birden, the publisher of Fiddlehead Focus, says readers have snapped up the newspaper each week and the website gets more than 700,000 page views each month.

The MPA board voted on Feb. 23 to accept Fiddlehead Focus as the association’s newest member.

Four weekly newspapers in coastal and central Maine closed March 9 when the owner of Village NetMedia announced that he had shut down the papers and their related websites.

The Village Soup Gazette in Rockland, the Village Soup Journal in Belfast, The Bar Harbor Times and the Capital Weekly in Augusta, all former Maine Press Association members and award winners, published their final editions shortly before their owner, Richard Anderson, announced the shutdown.

Village NetMedia bought the newspapers from Courier Publications in 2008. At the time, the group comprised The Courier-Gazette in Rockland, The Camden Herald, The Republican Journal in Belfast, The Bar Harbor Times and the Capital Weekly.

The Bangor Daily News reported in a story about the closure that The Republican Journal was founded in 1829, The Courier-Gazette started in 1846, the Camden Herald opened in 1870 and The Bar Harbor Times was nearly 100 years old.

Read Richard Anderson’s announcement. Read the story in the Bangor Daily News.

The Maine Press Association Contest eligibility year comes to a close on March 31. Rules packages and entry forms will be sent out shortly after that.

At the MPA board meeting on Feb. 23, several changes were proposed. No categories were added for this year, although the trend of combining some weekly categories and the daily/weekend categories continues.

One proposed change is that the “Advertising layout” category would become Advertising Excellence and based on a paper’s complete advertising presentation. It would be elevated to a Special Award and announced at the end of the awards ceremony with overall General Excellence.

This year, the only categories to be judged separately based on circulation in the weekly divisions (Weekly 1 and Weekly 2) would be General Excellence, Advertising Excellence, editorial page, news story and feature story. All other categories would be combined.

In acknowledgement that weekend papers no longer have independent staffs, there would not be separate writing, design and photography categories for daily and weekend papers. Weekend and daily papers would remain separate for consideration only in the General Excellence and Advertising Excellence categories.

Stories, photos and advertisements that appear in the weekend editions, like those that appear online, would still be eligible for entry in all regular categories.

Photo entries would still be made via Troy Bennett’s upload site, with the exception of picture story. That category, which involves multiple photo submissions, would be judged based on tear sheets and considered a design category, as the total package’s presentation to readers would be considered by the judges.

The board plans a final vote on these proposals at its meeting March 22. The MPA welcomes members’ comments, concerns or suggestions for additional changes, which can be sent to mainepressmail@gmail.com

For the fourth time in eight years, the Mount Desert Islander of Bar Harbor has won first place in the General Excellence category for smaller weeklies in the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest.

Winners for 2011 in a variety of news and advertising divisions were announced Feb. 11 at the regional association’s annual convention in Boston. Maine Press Association members won more than 60 awards in the contest, including 25 first-place awards. Those first-place winners were:

Staff, The Ellsworth American, Business Page or Section, Weekly Class 2
Jacqueline Weaver, The Ellsworth American, Spot News Photo, Weekly Class 2
Staff, The Ellsworth American, Living Page or Section, Weekly Class 2
Staff, The Ellsworth American, Local Election Coverage, Weekly Class
Staff, The Ellsworth American, Sports Page or Section, Weekly Class
Hugh Bowden, The Ellsworth American, Personality Photo, Weekly Class 2
Chris Crockett, The Ellsworth American, Website Design, Weekly Class
The Ellsworth American, Ad Rate Card/Rating Strategy, Weekly Class
The Ellsworth American, Advertising Sales Media Kit, Weekly Class
The Ellsworth American, Advertising Sales Presentation, Weekly Class
The Ellsworth American, Advertising Supplement/Special Section, Weekly Class 2
The Ellsworth American, Audience Building Promotion, Weekly Class
The Ellsworth American, Automotive Display Ad, Weekly Class
The Ellsworth American, Newspaper-Sponsored Event Promotion, Weekly Class

Michelle Snowden, Mount Desert Islander, Illustration, Weekly Class 1
Staff, Mount Desert Islander, Front Page, Weekly Class 1
Mount Desert Islander, Best Idea for Generating Ad Revenue, Weekly Class
Mount Desert Islander, Local Ad in Color, Weekly Class 1
Mount Desert Islander, Real Estate Display Ad, Weekly Class 1
Mount Desert Islander, General Excellence, Weekly Class 1

Boothbay Register, Advertising Supplement/Special Section, Weekly Class 1
Boothbay Register, Themed, Banner or Sponsored Ad Page, Weekly Class
Boothbay Register, Advertising General Excellence, Weekly Class 1

Laura Snyder Smith, The York Weekly, Living Page or Section, Weekly Class 1

A.M. Sheehan and Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, Advertiser-Democrat, Special Award, Weekly Class 1

To see complete results from the NENPA contest, go to: http://www.nenpa.com/