The Highlands Current won six first-place citations in the annual Awards for Excellence competition sponsored by the New York News Publishers Association, bringing its total to 17 since 2017. The winners were announced on June 1.
The Current competed against member newspapers that have circulations of 10,000 or less. Jeff Simms, Victoria Shannon, Leonard Sparks and Michael Turton won for business reporting for COVID 2021: Business as Usual, and Sparks won for investigative reporting for his story, Placed in Harm’s Way, about a interaction with the Putnam County child welfare system.
Turton won for sports writing for Leaving the Game Behind, a profile of Aaron Nastasi, who 20 years ago, after a stellar basketball career at Haldane, decided not to play in college; Brian PJ Cronin won for column-writing for Out There; Ross Corsair won for feature photography for a photo essay of residents of Garden Street in Cold Spring honoring health care workers called Make Some Noise!; and Pierce Strudler won for page design.
