LititzDailyNews.com captured four first-place awards, including Best Overall Digital Experience, in its first entry in the 2015 America East Digital Media Contest, a competition open to digital news publishers across the country.
The independent, online-only news site, which began publishing in September 2014, also took top honors for Best Overall Use of Social Media, Best Use of Multimedia and Best Use of Technology on the Web.
“Off to a pretty good start”
“This is an industry affirmation that LititzDailyNews.com has accomplished the goal of providing the Lititz community with timely, image-rich stories in a user-friendly format in only our first six months of publication,” said Lynn Rebuck, the site’s founding editor and publisher. “I think we’re off to a pretty good start.”
Rebuck accepted the awards in March 2015 at a ceremony at the Hershey Lodge held with the America East conference, which draws publishers from several states.
“This is amazing,” she said as she was handed the third award.
A surprise in two divisions
The Best Overall Digital Experience award is based on original content, use of multimedia, mobile experience, design, structure and community participation.
The site had entered only Division I, for sites with fewer than 50,000 average monthly unique visitors. Winning first place in Division II as well, a category for publications with 50,001 to 250,000 monthly unique visitors, came as an unexpected distinction.
The contest was judged by nine digital media professionals, including a senior project manager at Gannett Co.
“I want to thank the judges for their thoughtful recognition of LititzDailyNews.com, and for affirming the contribution of a hyper-local publisher to the online news community,” Rebuck said.
A one-person newsroom
At the time, Rebuck wrote all of the site’s stories, shot most of its photos and video and uploaded the content herself, while also posting to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. She sometimes stayed up overnight writing, then began advertising sales calls in the morning.
“All the honor and the glory goes to God,” she said. “This is about what God can do through one person in this day of digital publishing, not about what I have done. I am simply passionate about delivering a distinctive news product to the community and beyond.”
Unfettered by the space limits of print, she set out to include multiple images and video with each story, the work behind the multimedia award.
Stories with impact
Rebuck said the most rewarding part of the work was seeing how stories affected readers. After the site featured two local families facing medical and financial hardships, the community rallied to support them.
“Readers need good news,” said Rebuck, an award-winning journalist and columnist who started the site to provide more frequent news updates for Lititz.
Seven awards and counting
The four honors brought the publication’s total awards to seven. The week before, Rebuck had received two Keystone Press Awards for excellence in journalism from the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, which had accepted the site as a member months earlier.
She credited her son for help processing photos when the site launched, a note of encouragement from her daughter and the site’s IT consultant, Peter Stevenson, for its creative design and ongoing support. “I share these awards with him,” she said.
Looking ahead
Rebuck said she planned to expand coverage, add new advertising opportunities, including sponsorships of video sports highlights, and invite community members to contribute content. Later in 2015, the site was named a finalist for a national EPPY award.
About the contest
The America East Digital Media Contest recognized online journalism from publications across the region, judging entries on reporting, design and the overall reader experience.
This article was originally published in March 2015.