Times staff wins honors in 2022 competition [Gloucester Daily Times, Mass.]

Dec. 14—The Gloucester Daily Times staff has earned the Distinguished Newspaper designation for journalistic excellence based on reporting, editing, photojournalism and design in the 2022 New England Newspaper & Press Association competition.

The paper was judged on its 2021 editions of Sept. 13 and Oct. 21.

The Sept. 13 issue put Statehouse bureau chief Christian Wade to good use, covering state businesses' fight against rising employment insurance costs, while staff writer Taylor Ann Bradford touched base with restaurant owners struggling in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The front page also offered two election stories, one of which directed readers to a voting guide and election warrant at gloucestertimes.com. The edition featured an especially packed opinion page, putting residents at the center of the community conversation, and a sports section that put local high school football front and center with plenty of digestible stats.

In the Oct. 21 edition, staff writer Gail McCarthy wrote how a damaged vessel's arrival in port — en route from China — caused a diplomatic stir. Also on the front page were stories on how redistricting was affecting city elections, and what some candidates saw as the issues. Inside, readers found McCarthy's weekly roundup of local arts and entertainment happenings.

The Times' sister paper and The Eagle-Tribune won the Publick Occurrences and Distinguished Newspaper awards while staff reporter Jill Harmacinski, whose work often appears in the Times, won the prestigious Sevellon Brown Journalist of the Year Award.

Harmacinski's award recognizes her coverage of a break in a 34-year-old cold case involving the Lawrence murder of Melissa Ann Tremblay of Salem, New Hampshire, who was stabbed and left on the railroad tracks to be run over by a train when she was 11 years old. That same coverage earned the newspaper its Publick Occurrences prize.

On April 29, Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett and investigators announced that Marvin McClendon, 74, of Bremen, Alabama, and formerly of Massachusetts, was charged with the 1988 first-degree murder of Tremblay and would be extradited to Massachusetts. Harmacinski, however, wanted the story sooner and requested a trip south to find out more. The powerful resulting narrative that appeared May 1 in the Sunday Eagle-Tribune and May 2 in the Times provided intricate insight into the man accused of this heinous crime.

The Sevellon Brown award is presented annually to just one New England journalist, recognizing the individual for producing journalism of distinction.

For the newspaper's Publick Occurrences award, judges lauded The Eagle-Tribune for vigorous proactiveness.

"The paper didn't wait for the slow wheels of justice to bring a suspect back to face the murder charge of more than three decades before," judges wrote in their comments. "It sent a reporter to the small Alabama town where he had fled after the crime."

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