25-05-2025
American-Statesman journalists receive top honors from Society for Features Journalism
The American-Statesman received six top awards from the Society for Features Journalism in various categories for excellence in long-form storytelling.
SFJ recognizes impactful, moving features stories across the country each year through its awards, which were announced Wednesday. Nearly 1,000 pieces were submitted to this year's national competition, according to the organization, and five Statesman reporters were among the winners.
The Statesman received fourth place overall for 'Finest in Features Sweepstakes Awards,' among the top newsrooms honored in all 21 categories. Latino Communities Reporter Emiliano Tahui Gómez received two first-place awards for his 'enlightening' and strong reporting, judges said.
Gómez won first place for a sports feature on a Venezuelan immigrant softball league in North Austin, and he received an honorable mention for his feature-writing portfolio.
He and fellow Statesman reporters, Tony Plohetski and Keri Heath, placed first for a three-part series examining the 2024 fatal Hays school bus crash in Bastrop County. The three-reporter team also won third place for the same series in the features narrative category.
The series has also been honored as a finalist for a 2025 Education Writers Award, which has yet to be announced. And the reporting team recently received an award from the Fort Worth chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in general news writing.
Judges called their narrative account of the bus crash an 'excellent retelling of the totality of this tragedy.'
In the arts and culture criticism category for the national features contests, Matthew Odam, a longtime food critic for the Statesman, won second place for the 'clarity and vividness' of his writing, and Features Editor Deborah Sengupta Stith won third place for her 'beautiful' music reviews.
The Statesman's Austin360 entertainment staff was awarded a prestigious international award Thursday from the International News Media Association for their Austin City Sounds event, which was held during the week between Austin City Limits Festival's two-weekend event last year. Awarded "Best Use of an Event to Build a News Brand," the team hosted a live music show at Guero's Taco Bar on South Congress Avenue featuring four Austin-based musicians and bands showcasing different stylings of the city's music.
Statesman health reporter Nicole Villapando also won the Anson Jones Award on Thursday from the Texas Medical Association for her story on 10,812 Texas children who were unenrolled from Medicaid by the state and moved to another program with higher costs.
Higher education reporter Lily Kenner earlier this year received a Texas School Bell Award for an outstanding feature on education issues for her story on the effects of the elimination of diversity-related jobs at the University of Texas. The award is administered through the Texas State Teachers Association.
"I am immensely proud of the work our journalists produce at the Statesman," said Editor in Chief Courtney Sebesta. "They strive to tell the stories of every day Central Texans with compassion and honesty. Receiving recognition from our peers is a wonderful and humbling feeling."
Other awards Statesman reporters have won this year can be found here and here.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Statesman journalists receive top honors at national features awards
