NCR Staff Report
The Nassau County Record won the General Excellence award in the Florida Press Association Weekly Newspaper Contest, as well as eight other awards.
The Record competes among small weekly newspapers throughout the state. The first place General Excellence award denotes the best newspaper overall in its class.
The contest is open to weekly and semi-weekly newspapers who are FPA members. This year, a total of 1,523 entries were submitted among the state’s weekly newspapers. A panel of working newspaper editors from Arizona, Colorado and California served as judges for the contest.
The awards were presented Friday during the 2025 Florida Media Conference at the Sunseeker Resort in Charlotte Harbor.
“We work hard every week to produce a quality newspaper for our community. The Record has won 64 Florida Press Association Awards within the past 10 years, with 19 of those as first place awards, but this one is truly special,” Record Publisher and Editor Amanda Bishop said. “It represents the literal blood, sweat and tears we put forth. Paper cuts can be brutal, Florida heat is no joke, especially on the sidelines of sports, and we certainly mourn right alongside our neighbors when tragedies occur.”
The award was presented to the staff as a whole, including Bishop, reporter Anna Newhoff and advertising representative Mariah Arnold. The newspaper is owned by Community Newspapers, Inc., with the staff fully comprised of Callahan residents currently.
“The team at the Nassau County Record continues to produce excellent community journalism that accurately reflects western Nassau County in all areas and I salute them on this outstanding General Excellence award,” said CNI Southeast Regional Publisher Todd Wilson. “Amanda Bishop, Anna Newhoff and Mariah Arnold exemplify our mission statement that a strong newspaper leads in its community. The Record continues to be the leader in Callahan, Hilliard and all of the western Nassau communities.”
The Record also won first and third place in Best Obituary. Bishop won the top prize for “Porch swing perch vacant” about Lavern Meeks, the Record office’s neighbor who died in September 2024 at age 93. The newspaper office recently inherited Meeks’ couch and Bishop learned of the award while seated on it.
“We loved Ms. Lavern so much, so I actually got tears in my eyes when I learned of the award,” Bishop said. “Her son David and daughter-in-law Brenda Higginbotham were actually at her house Friday and I walked over and shared the news in Ms. Lavern’s living room.”
Former Record reporter Kathie Sciullo took third place in the obituary category for “Family tree rooted in municipal service,” a tribute to former Hilliard Mayor David Buchanan, who died May 7, 2024 at the age of 76.
“The mayor would always give a memorable status up-date,” Bishop chuckled. “The state of the town is good.”
Sciullo also won first place in Business Reporting with the January 2024 story “Diamond lacks luster” regarding the then-status of the Crawford Diamond Industrial Site.
Bishop earned second place in Best Headline for “Money roll” regarding an armored cash truck rolling over on the Wells Fargo lawn in May 2024 and “Diamond lacks luster.”
Third place awards included Sports Column for Bishop’s opinion “Winning on and off scoreboard.” She wrote about the Hilliard boys basketball coaching staff quickly benching the team’s starters rather than purposely running up the scoreboard against West Nassau.
She noted in the piece, “I will forever have pride in all of the high schools we report on, but have to note the true integrity shown by Coach Myron Saunders and assistant coaches Carlous Hall, Dennis Alderman and Holden Whiten. They could have ran up the score into the triple digits against the young Warriors, but instead showed class.”
The Flashes had a terrific season in 2024, finishing the year as state runners-up. With the Record’s coverage, Bishop also earned third place in Sports Spot News Story for “Flashes still No. 1 in fans’ hearts.”
Bishop also won third place in Education Feature for “Signed, Sealed, Delivered: HES class receives hundreds of valentines” and third place in Agricultural Reporting for “Rooted and Grounded: Family farm grows life lessons.”
“I so enjoyed visiting the family farm and learning about their practices as they homeschool their children and teach them how food truly arrives at the table,” Bishop said. “And I could have stayed in Suzanne Gaus’ class for days. I truly enjoyed interacting with her sweet students and reading several of the cards they received.”
Bishop added, “We are so thankful that our neighbors throughout Nassau County invite us to share their stories with our readers. It’s sometimes a thankless job, but more often than not, we hear that we made a difference or that people learned something from reading that week’s newspaper, and that’s our ultimate goal. We’re blessed to write about our local community and thankful for the press association’s recognition of our efforts to produce quality journalistic content.”