Behind the scenes

By Aubrey Ann Parker
Current Contributor

In January 2026, we served as judges for the 2025 New York Press Association awards—just from our home office in Frankfort, Michigan; we did not travel to New York or anything.

In case you were unaware, last year, our publication won two 1st Place Awards from the Michigan Press Association.

That was our first year ever submitting, so to come away with two 1st Place Awards felt pretty amazing!

Congrats to writer Greta Bolger for her profile on the Ukrainian family in Frankfort, which won 1st Place for the “Features” category, and to Jessica Gardner and Sarah Louisignau for their contributions to our annual “Special September” issue, which won 1st Place for the “Special Section” category.

The way it works: we are judged by our peers from other states. In other words, Press Associations from different states rotate each year to judge each other’s entries.

This year, Michigan journalists got the task of judging New York submissions, and we at The Betsie Current were assigned to judge “Feature Story-Lifestyle, Human Interest, or Personality Profile” (not surprising, since we won this category last year) and “Best News/Feature Series.”

For “Feature Story,” the criteria were:

“Honors exceptional storytelling that captures the essence of people, places, or everyday life. Entries may focus on lifestyle trends, personal experiences, community members, or notable individuals. Entries will be judged on writing quality, originality, creativity, and the ability to engage and inform readers. Strong entries will connect readers emotionally while revealing something meaningful about the subject.”

For “Best News/Feature Series,” the criteria were:

“Submit a series… on the same subject, such as people, places, business, recreation, fashion, sports, hobbies, etc… The emphasis is on writing, breadth of coverage, presentation, and supporting art or photos.”

There were 29 total “Feature Story” entries. Additionally, there were 28 total entries for “Best News/Feature Series,” however, each entry could have up to 10 total stories within it, so it ended up being more than 150 separate articles to read and judge.

This was our first time judging, but overall, we found it to be a really interesting exercise and very useful in terms of seeing what journalists in other states are writing about and publishing—good storytelling is universal, regardless of location.

That seems so simple—and it is something that we theoretically already knew—but it was nice to see this play out in “the real world” in a location that we otherwise knew very little about.

While folks like to harp on about the “state of the media,” the truth is that the local journalism scene continues to be the beating heart of American communities, regardless of location.

Here is just a sampling of the stories that we got to read last week:
 •  innovative ways to reduce pests while growing pears;
  •  using highland cows and Asian water buffalos to remove invasive species as an alternative to aggressive herbicides;
  •  three different post-mortem profiles (different from obituaries; one traced the victim of an accident from a sleeping driver back to her hometown in Vietnam; another featured a cancer patient whose dying wish was to have all of her friends and family donate blood at a big party; a daughter who took over her father’s business);
  •  a boat club trying to keep its independence and fight eminent domain by the town council (this reminded us a lot of our own Congregational Summer Assembly-CSA  and/or the Crystal Lake Yacht Club communities);
  •  profiles of everyone from a vegan with a leather fetish to a beloved retiring local politician to a girl scout who volunteered her whole summer to run an oyster farm for improving the local water quality to an artist-priest who once owned a company that sent “ethical” shorts for Cameron Diaz in a Vogue photoshoot to a female NASA astronaut to a 101-year-old man who is the last living customer of Frank Lloyd Wright;
  •  sooooo many restaurant profiles (Thai, Greek, a 100-year-old luncheonette);
  •  a pie contest that was judged by Martha Stewart, including the award-winning pie recipe (which we want to attempt to bake);
  •  a happenstance story of a woman who rescued a man from drowning when his sailboat capsized, and then she was his bartender later that same week.

We could see The Betsie Current publishing so many of these stories, if the location had been Benzie County instead of Upstate New York or Brooklyn.

Whether in New York or in our small corner of Michigan, if you look to your (award-winning) local media organizations, you will likely find stories of hope, of the human condition, of what ties us all together, regardless of age, race, gender, nationality, upbringing, religion, political ideology, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status.

Please support local journalism. Maybe that means buying an ad, maybe that means subscribing to their emails or following them on social media, maybe that means just telling your friends about them. “Hey, did you see that recent article about X, Y, Z? It was great!”

We cannot do this without you—and why would we want to?

This marks the first issue of our 15th year in print, and we cannot wait to tell even more “good news” stories from Benzie and beyond—and maybe we will even win a few awards this year again, who knows!? 

Stay tuned for more from us in 2026.

Featured Photo Caption: The Betsie Current editors had the opportunity to judge some of the entries for “Features” in the 2025 New York Press Association awards. Image courtesy of the NYPA.