What is it, exactly, about William DeKay’s eye?
It looks much like any other eye. It has an iris and a pupil and lashes — pretty much the usual human thing.
Judging by the number of awards that eye brings in, though, it’s very different from most other eyes.
Bill won photographer of the year last week at the American Agricultural Editors’ Association shindig in Buffalo, New York, for the fourth time. He also won 10 other photography awards, ranging from first place to honourable mention (he tied with himself for first in one category), a writing award and brought himself up to level four in the master writer’s program.
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Not bad for one night. I’m betting he couldn’t cram all of that hardware into his suitcase, so I’ll be expecting a crate one day with all the goodies in it.
There will also be plaques for WP staffers Michelle Houlden and Sean Pratt, Michelle for her amazing design work and Sean for his clean, excellent writing.
Michelle, who has won within the design awards program before, will have five new pieces of hardware. She took first and second in the single page editorial design category; first in the overall magazine design/special issues category; and tied for both first and third in the best use of chart and graph material.
Sean took third in the breaking news category for his story on how the prairie canola crop was flattened, dispersed and shattered by high winds last fall.
It was a good take for The Western Producer, particularly in a year when the American farm media was fully absorbed in one of the worst droughts in its history.
Sean’s story competed well in this environment. It was that drought, which created the winds that shattered the canola crop that Sean wrote about, that landed him the award — if you’ll forgive the sentence structure.
I’m proud to be called their editor. Our staff regularly pit their stories, photographs and designs against some of the big media companies in the United States, and regularly win a whole bunch of awards. It’s very satisfying, and quite thrilling, to be able to tell people I’m the boss of an award-winning team.
Even more importantly, though, this is an incredible, hard-working, insightful group every day, whether it’s award season or not. That, for me and for our readers, is the real prize.
