Robin Zielinski / NMPolitics.net
The article, which has now won three awards, told the story of Luz Skywalker and Zach Eason, a multi-ethnic Las Cruces couple, and their daughter Luna. The reporters placed the family in a larger context with statistics and other information, with the 2016 election as a backdrop.
An article NMPolitics.net and the Las Cruces Sun-News produced last year about how a multi-ethnic family is working to make ends meet and get along in a complicated world has won another award.
The article, “Millennials like this mixed-ethnicity couple are reshaping America,” won first place in the feature writing category of the New Mexico Press Association’s 2017 Better Newspaper Contest. Damien Willis wrote the article and Robin Zielinski created a video report and photos to accompany it.
The award was announced Saturday during the annual NMPA convention at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort and Spa north of Albuquerque.
A competition judge wrote that Willis’ article was “very well written” and “really tackles” complex issues around race. The article beat submissions from the Albuquerque Journal and other newspapers with a circulation above 11,000 in New Mexico for the first-place award — and the reason, the judge wrote, was that “the writing was excellent.”
Willis and Zielinski told the story of Luz Skywalker and Zach Eason, a multi-ethnic Las Cruces couple, and their daughter Luna. They placed the family in a larger context with statistics and other information, with the 2016 election as a backdrop.
This is the third award the story has won. Earlier this year it won a national award — second place in the feature story category of the National Federation of Press Women’s 2017 competition. It also won first place for feature writing in the New Mexico Press Women’s annual competition.
The article was part of a collaboration between NMPolitics.net and the Sun-News to tell stories about multi-ethnic families in New Mexico as a way to bridge our understanding of one another. The second article in the series told the story of a Las Cruces mother who makes sense of tragedy by doing stand-up comedy. The project was funded with help from the Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance.
You can read the story about Skywalker and Eason here.