Newspaper group earns environmental award for forest series

The East Oregonian Publishing Group’s series “The Fate of Our Forests” has won the Northwest’s top environmental journalism award.

It was honored with the Dolly Connelly Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism Thursday. The award was presented at the annual convention of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association in Tacoma, Wash.

The project was spearheaded by Steve Forrester, editor and publisher of The Daily Astorian and president and CEO of the East Oregonian Publishing Group. It highlighted the business, environmental and lifestyle implications of the changing patterns of Northwest forest ownership, especially the trend in which private investment organizations are replacing traditional forest products companies.

Forrester and Scotta Callister, editor of the Blue Mountain Eagle, were lead writers. The series, published earlier this year, included stories by Samantha Tipler and Erin Mills, of the East Oregonian in Pendleton, Nancy McCarthy and Cassandra Profita, of The Daily Astorian, Mateusz Perkowski and Mitch Lies, of the Capital Press in Salem, Chuck Anderson and Brian Addison, of the Wallowa County Chieftain in Enterprise, Sandra Gubel, of the Blue Mountain Eagle and Cate Cable, a freelance writer for the Chinook Observer in Long Beach, Wash.

Judges praised the series. Sam Verhovek, author and former correspondent with the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, described it as, “Local journalism at its best. This series not only explained the changes and odd-bedfellows arrangements sweeping forest management in Oregon, it also explained in clear, lively prose the politics and economics of the issue as well.”

Receiving the award was Patrick Webb, managing editor of The Daily Astorian, who coordinated the writers. It is the third Dolly Connelly Award won by the newspaper group. The Daily Astorian earned the 2001 award for “Life on the Brink,” a three-part series on the Columbia River estuary. The second win was in 2007 for the group’s substantial 2006 series called “Our Climate is Changing,” which also earned national recognition.

The Dolly Connelly Award was established in 1998 by Seattle Post Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly in memory of his mother, who worked as a freelance journalist and correspondent for Time-Life, and died in 1995. Small to mid-sized newspapers in Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and British Columbia have won the award.

According to judges, the award “strives annually to honor organizations and reporters who show remarkable insight and drive to expose and explain environmental issues to readers.”