1199SEIU.org and Our Life And Times Garner Eight Labor Press Awards

June 21, 2012

1199SEIU’s website, www.1199SEIU.org and its magazine, Our Life And Times garnered a total of eight awards in this year’s journalism contest of the Metro New York Labor Journalism Communications Council. The awards were given out for work produced in 2011 and presented at Metro’s annual convention which was held on June 15 in Manhattan at the City University of New York’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.

Metro was founded in 1974 as a forum where labor communicators could exchange ideas and discuss the challenges of giving the labor movement a voice. Prizes for 1199’s website and magazine were given in the following categories:

• General Excellence, Web – www.1199seiu.org won first place in this category, with the judges noting the site’s good prioritizing of content, navigability and prominent feature of news articles. “1199 won because they have the most community facing features,” said Metro judges.

• Best Social Media - 1199SEIU’s Facebook page - won second prize in this category for posting and re-tweeting a wide range of content from a diverse group of organizations.

• Best E-Newsletter – 1199SEIU’s eblast won first prize, with judges calling it punchy, dynamic and well-structured.

• Best Feature – First place went to Patricia Kenney’s story about workers on the front lines of the greening of healthcare “They Know We’re Trying to Make the World Better.”

• General Excellence, Print – Our Life And Times received a third place award, with the Metro judges calling OLAT “strikingly beautiful” and noting that “The design, photography, and typography are visually dazzling and impeccably balanced.”

• Best Photo – An honorable mention went to Buffalo Organizer Jim Crampton’s photo from a medical mission to Ghana which was covered in the August/September 2011 issue. “The photo draws the viewer in because of the direct and unflinching gaze of the subjects,” said the judges.

• Best Reporting – Third place was awarded to staff writer Patricia Kenney’s piece “Workers Fight for Peninsula.” The story appeared just after Hurricane Irene. “The short but substantive piece looks at disaster in an unusual way. It highlights the importance of local hospitals in a time of natural disaster…” said judges.

• Best Editorial or Column – Our Life And Times Editor JJ Johnson’s editorial “Our Planet Is in Crisis and Our Health is At Stake” won an honorable mention.