And the winner is…
That is what the Salmon Arm Observer and the Eagle Valley News will be waiting to hear at the BC and Yukon Community Newspaper Association awards on April 29.
Both newspapers in the Shuswap have been nominated as top three finalists in the general excellence category for their respective circulation categories. The General Excellence awards are the prizes given for the all-round best newspapers in the province, including reporting, editorial and opinion columns, sports, arts, advertising and classified advertising coverage.
The Salmon Arm Observer is up against the Whistler Question and Powell River Peak in contention for the top prize, while the Eagle Valley News is facing competition from the Haida Gwaii Observer and the Lake Cowichan Gazette.
In addition to the excellence nominations, the Observer’s former photographer Evan Buhler has been nominated as a finalist for four individual awards.
These include an entry in the sports photo for a shot of an airborne Silverbacks player, and an entry in the photo essay category for his Roots and Blues images. Buhler also claimed two of the three finalists slots in the feature photo category, one for an image in the Observer of the Northern Lights over Eagle Bay and another for an image in the Shuswap Market News of Adam Meikle assembling artist Luke Stalker-Switzer’s sculptural exhibition of rainbow coloured faces.
Buhler left the Observer in December to embark on travelling adventures in New Zealand.