Oldest — and best — weekly newspaper in Texas!

“We are the champions!”

The seminal Queen song applies to the Gonzales Inquirer — and by extension, the entire Gonzales County community — as your hometown newspaper was crowned the Sweepstakes winner for Division 7 at the 2022 Texas Press Association Better Newspaper Contest this past weekend.

The Inquirer collected a trophy case full of hardware with first-place plaques in nine categories: Public Notice, Advertising, Editorial, Feature Photography, General Excellence, News Photography, Page Design, Sports Coverage and Sports Photography.

Add to that second-place finishes in Feature Writing and News Writing, a third place in Column Writing and fourth-place finishes in Community Service and Special Section and the oldest weekly newspaper in Texas closed out the TPA Convention at Kalahari Resorts in Round Rock as the most decorated newspaper in the Lone Star State — regardless of size.

The Inquirer collected a total of 1,000 Sweepstakes points, the only newspaper in the state of Texas to hit that threshold and had more points than the next three newspapers in Division 7 combined.

In doing so, the Inquirer made good on an aspiration that I had the moment last year’s convention in San Marcos ended. I even made the prediction in our Aug. 5, 2022, edition.

“The Gonzales Inquirer will be celebrating its 170th anniversary next year as the oldest continuously published weekly newspaper in the state,” Cohn said. “Our goal for next year’s Texas Press Association contest is to win the Sweepstakes Award and build off the success we had this year.” 

What makes this win even more impressive is that it was achieved by a skeleton crew of employees who put their hearts and souls into producing the best newspaper in Texas, despite the devastating loss of our beloved advertising sales executive and sports writer Louis Decker last July. Some of Decker’s final work with the Inquirer was part of the entries which won first place for Sports Coverage and first place in Advertising.

The judges from the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association had plenty of great things to say about the Inquirer.

The judges praised the Inquirer for its Editorial Writing, which included entries about the newspaper’s political coverage policies and an editorial explaining county property tax increases.

“Readers may disagree with the newspaper’s polices on political coverage, but it’s smart and good to show those boundaries. And explaining property taxes and the like is not easy, but this is well done,” the judges wrote.

Feature photography included Vandy Van Epps’ spectacular work in showcasing Float Fest as well as the newspaper’s graduation photo pages, which judges called “lovely. Nice emotion and some nice light.”

In General Excellence, the judges found the Inquirer to be “visually very pleasing. Nice photos (looks like there’s a lot of reader buy in, i.e. back to school, but just lots of faces all the way through), good variety of content. Really nice page design overall.”

That Page Design, which is performed by Marissa Ferreira, was lauded for its “good incorporation of photos into stylized headlines.”

When it comes to News Photography, the Inquirer wowed the judges. “Great Stations of the Cross photo! Interesting shot of the color run,” they wrote.

The Discover magazine, produced by the Inquirer, led judges to comment, “Interesting Texas history here. Well packaged and presented with great photos.”

The Inquirer entry for Community Service included its February 2022 candidate forum, co-sponsored with the Gonzales County Republican Party. Judges provided constructive criticism: “This forum and coverage provides lots of important information to voters in the community. I enjoyed the coverage of the event, but would have liked to see the Q &A style section broken up some more, the large blocks of text are hard to stay engaged with.”

Finally, in the Public Notice Division, judges appreciated how the newspaper used a public notice about water wells to keep readers informed with continuing coverage.

“Excellent follow-up after a public notice about a permit application for public supply wells, with multiple stories about public hearings and concerns,” the judges wrote.

The 2022 Texas Better Newspaper Contest featured 18 categories. Participating newspapers were invited to submit entries from work published during the calendar year 2022. This year, 99 newspapers submitted 920 entries in the contest. 

Division 1 was reserved for the five metro dailies with the highest circulation in Texas, which complete only in the General Excellence category. Division 2 is designated for dailies; Divisions 3, 4 and 5 for semiweeklies (newspapers publishing two or three times per week) and Divisions 6 through 10 for weeklies.

This year, eight dailies competed in Division 2; 31 semiweekly newspapers competed in Divisions 3, 4 and 5; and 53 weekly newspapers competed in divisions 6 through 10. 

Competitions were divided into divisions in which newspapers competed against publications of similar circulation. 

TPA member newspapers competing in each division had the opportunity to submit entries in 12 sweepstakes contest categories and six non-sweepstakes contest categories.
In the sweepstakes contest categories, awards were presented in all eight circulation divisions.
In the non-sweepstakes categories, divisions were determined by the number of entries from dailies, semiweeklies and weeklies. This year there were three divisions in the Community Service, Best Website, Online Coverage, Best Magazine and Public Notice competition categories; and five divisions in the Special Section category. 

Entries were judged this year by members of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association while Texas Press Association member volunteers judged entries in the ONPA contest. 

First place winners and sweepstakes winners receive plaques and certificates are awarded in first through fourth places. 

Sweepstakes points are earned for each division (except Division 1) based on point accumulation in the 12 sweepstakes categories: 100 points for each first-place award, 75 points for each second-place award, 50 points for each third-place award and 25 points for each fourth-place award. 

Awards were presented on June 3, at the 2023 TPA Convention & Trade Show in Round Rock.