The Sealy News earned a host of awards from the 2019-2020 Better Newspaper Contest at the Texas Press Association’s 141st convention in Denton over the weekend. Nine recognitions were earned, including five first-place plaques and second place in the overall sweepstakes in its circulation division among Texas weeklies.

The five category winners were earned for feature writing, headline writing, news photo, page design and community service. The two second-place awards were for news writing and sports photo and a third-place award was for sports writing. In the general excellence category, four consecutive weeks of papers were critiqued and another third-place award was won.

With nine recognitions, the News racked up 650 points to take second in the overall sweepstakes race behind only the Pilot Point Post-Signal in Denton. The Ozuna Stockman (400 points) and Hamilton Herald-News (275 points) trailed Sealy.

General Manager Amy Lieb was proud of the staff’s effort and pleased with the haul of recognitions.

“I was honored to bring the awards to the office and acknowledge the well-deserving members of our staff,” Lieb said. “Since returning to The Sealy News, we have strived to produce high-quality news, entertainment and sports content and this is an example of those efforts.”

The 2019-2020 contest featured 18 categories which were the most seen in the contest’s history according to the TPA. 90 newspapers submitted 934 entries into the contest divided up by circulation: 22 dailies competed in Divisions 2 and 3; 18 semiweekly newspapers competed in Divisions 4 and 5; and 50 weekly newspapers competed in Divisions 6 through 9.