c. 1998 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ Religion News Service (RNS) reporters earned four first-place honors in the Associated Church Press 1997 Awards competition for their coverage of topics ranging from the Salvation Army and the Christian Coalition, to the U.S. visit of Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
Writer Adelle M. Banks won two first-place”awards of excellence.”Her article”Ralph Reed to Leave the Christian Coalition,”was honored in the category for news story by a news service or newsletter. Her story”Southern Baptists Vote to Boycott Disney”was cited in the category of convention or meeting coverage by a news service.
Writers Joan Connell and Ira Rifkin won first-place honors for their two- month series of stories about the ecumenical patriarch’s visit to the United States. They were honored in the in-depth coverage category for a newspaper or news service.
Writer Michael J. Paquette tied for a first-place award for”Salvation Army: A Look Behind the Red Kettles”in the category for feature article by a news service or newsletter.
RNS also won two other awards.
RNS publisher Dale Hanson Bourke tied for a second-place”award of merit”for her column on”Why Good Kids Do Bad Things.”Banks won an honorable mention for her interview of Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, a megachurch in S. Barrington, Ill., in the interview category.
Top awards for Best in Class honors went to the following winners:
Regional newspaper: The Catholic Sun.
National or international newspaper: Anglican Journal.
Denominational general interest magazine: The Lutheran.
General interest magazine, not denominational: The Christian Century.
Special interest magazine: American Bible Society Record.
News service:”News Briefs,”the Presbyterian News Service weekly.
Newsletter: Presbyterian Life and Times
The Christian Century, a Chicago-based, mainline Protestant oriented magazine, also earned the first-place award for the topic of the year, ecumenism, for an article titled”What the Lutherans and Reformed can learn from one another; Seeking common ground”by Gabriel Fackre and Allan E. Johnson.
The United Church Observer, the Toronto-based national magazine of the United Church of Canada, and U.S. Catholic, a Chicago-based magazine published by Claretian Publications, each won 12 honors.
DEA END RNS
