Virginia Business wins three national journalism awards

Virginia Business won three national journalism awards Monday during The Alliance of Area Business Publishers’ (AABP) 2023 Editorial Excellence Awards ceremony, held in Detroit.

Virginia Business Deputy Editor Kate Andrews placed gold in the Best Coverage of Local Breaking News category for medium-size business publications for her coverage of the Nov. 22, 2022, workplace shooting that took the lives of six people at a Chesapeake Walmart store.

“It’s hard enough to cover a mass shooting as it happens, with the information about who and why and how changing minute to minute,” the judges said in their remarks for Andrews’ gold award. “With skilled dexterity, [Andrews] managed to cover the essential details and most relevant information while also providing larger contextual information about similar situations, bringing in expert sources to enhance the coverage and information service provided by the story.”

Virginia Business Assistant Editor Katherine Schulte also received a silver award for Best Feature, Single Story, for her November 2022 cover story about why Virginia lags behind other Southern states in landing big economic development deals. Judges said, “The story of how Virginia captured Lego is a cautionary tale about the importance of volume in the economic development business. Told with wonderful detail, the story reveals the massive effort to land Lego. But it also details the reasons behind the failure to capture any other significant employers in the past seven years. The story offers important context behind the headlines.”

Virginia Business Editor and Chief Content Officer Richard Foster also took home a silver award, placing in the Best Bylined Commentary category for his columns “Breaking rank,” about the state’s latest ranking in CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business list; “A ‘quiet’ place?” about the quiet quitting phenomenon; and “Getting meta,” about tech companies’ efforts to build the online metaverse.

Judges said, “In the spirit of seeking accountability and advocating for civic progress, the columns issue a forceful calling out of the governor on his positions and priorities. They include useful context of the state of affairs to ground the columns.”

The awards were judged by faculty members from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Each award category was judged by a panel of three judges. The awards ceremony was held as part of AABP’s three-day annual conference.

Founded in 1979, AABP is a Norwalk, Connecticut-based nonprofit organization representing about 65 regional and local business publications in the United States, Canada and Australia, with a combined circulation of more than 1.8 million business professionals.