BizTimes Milwaukee wins seven national business journalism awards

BizTimes Milwaukee won seven business journalism awards in the Alliance of Area Business Publishers 2019 Editorial Excellence Awards competition.

The annual AABP Editorial Excellence competition recognizes excellence in journalism, photography and design achieved by regional business publications. The competition was judged by 24 members of the University of Missouri School of Journalism faculty. There were 511 entries in the competition submitted by 41 business publications in the U.S., Canada and Australia. Click here to see the full list of winners and comments from the judges.

The awards were presented Saturday at the AABP’s annual summer conference, held this year in Atlanta.

BizTimes Milwaukee received the following awards:

• A Gold (first place) award in the Best Newspaper – Medium Tabloids category. The award recognizes overall excellence for a printed publication. The judges’ comments on BizTimes Milwaukee were: “The photography is solid. The design is clean and places attention on the content itself. Illustrations are used throughout very effectively. The overall architecture makes it easy to navigate through the entire publication. Front of the book sections include little nuggets for everyone. The cover stories are well reported and very people-focused.”
  
• BizTimes Milwaukee art director Shelly Tabor and graphic designer Alex Schneider won a Gold Award in the Best Overall Design – Medium Tabloids category. Judges’ comments: “The overall design is neat and controlled. There’s a well-regulated and consistently good design style throughout. Well-placed, metered elements of creativity like the creative headlines used in the ‘Ransomware’ story add to the reader experience without taking away, and demonstrate the close attention that is given to the layout of each article in the publication. Covers like ‘Guac is Good’ grab attention and add a nice element of newsstand appeal.”
• BizTimes Milwaukee won a Silver Award in the Best Website category. This category is not broken down by size. The Gold Award for Best Website went to Crain’s Chicago Business. Judges’ comments about BizTimes.com: “Clean design helps the audience to take in a lot of solid content about the local and regional economy. Dropdown navigation – including a prominent place for Foxconn News — effectively enables readers to find stories of specific interest to them and their industry.”
• BizTimes Milwaukee managing editor Molly Dill won a Silver award in the Best Recurring Feature – Medium Tabloids category for Rev Up, which regularly profiles an area second-stage startup company. Judges’ comments: “What makes a second-stage startup different from a first? Less of a reliance on hope. That’s what makes ‘Rev Up’ so compelling: It’s not about a new company that has a great idea. It’s about a company that had a great idea and is making it work. The feature replaces the starry-eyed dream talk of first-stage startups with practical, interesting information from those who did, in fact, start up and get going.”
• BizTimes Milwaukee reporter Lauren Anderson won a Silver award in the Best Feature – Medium Tabloids category for her April 30, 2018 cover story: “Survivorship is the goal.” The story is about a promising new cancer treatment practiced at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin and the incredible success experienced by one cancer patient. Judges’ comments: “Following the journey of one cancer patient is the thread that holds this story together as it deftly explores life-saving medical technologies and the research investment that makes them possible. Well-told and thoroughly reported, the story never loses its heart.”
  
• Tabor won a Silver award in the Best Feature Layout – Newspaper category for the design for the Oct. 15, 2018 cover story: “Wisconsin’s Health Care Squeeze.” Judges’ comments: “The illustrations are fun and use the same consistent tone throughout. Unity is created by the color palette and the red strip identifying the package as the cover story. Clever use of condensed type on the headline plays off the idea of a ‘squeeze.'”
• BizTimes Milwaukee won a Silver award in the Best Auxiliary Publication – Medium Tabloids category for “STUFF Made and Built in Southeastern Wisconsin.” Judges’ comments: “An excellent resource for residents of southeastern Wisconsin on the hunt for jobs. It offers sound advice for how to find a career that fits and employment that’s rewarding. There’s a good mix of short stories, longer features, quizzes and graphics that pace the reader.”

In 2018, BizTimes Milwaukee won five awards in the AABP’s annual business journalism competition. In 2017, BizTimes Milwaukee won six awards in the AABP contest.