FREEPORT — The Sun Journal of Lewiston and the Maine Sunday Telegram have won top honors in daily and weekend divisions in the Maine Press Association’s 2012 Better Newspaper Contest.

Also winning Newspaper of the Year among weekly newspapers were the Mount Desert Islander of Bar Harbor for circulation of 4,000 or more and the York County Coast Star of Kennebunk for smaller papers.

A.M. Sheehan and Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, whose reporting for the Advertiser Democrat of Norway exposed substandard conditions in public housing, shared Journalist of the Year honors.

Hongoltz-Hetling is now a reporter for the Morning Sentinel.

Earlier Saturday, at the MPA fall conference banquet in Freeport, Mary Brewer and Ann McGowan were inducted into the Hall of Fame.

McGowan, 77, of Pittsfield, who retired in 1996 as managing editor of the Morning Sentinel, was one of the first women to be appointed managing editor of a daily newspaper in Maine.

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She began working for the Sentinel in 1961 as a part-time correspondent.

Brewer, a former Journalist of the Year and MPA president, retired this year as managing editor of the Boothbay Register and Wiscasset Newspaper.

Of the 10 awards the Morning Sentinel won, photographer Michael G. Seamans led the staff with three. He won a first place each for a general news photo of a man amid the debris of his destroyed home and a photo story of a demolition derby.

He also won a second place for a photo story about a couple caring for an ailing parent with dementia.

Writer Travis Lazarczyk and photographer David Leaming both won two awards.

Lazarczyk won a second place for two sports columns and a third for a sports feature about concussions.

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Leaming won a second place for a breaking news photo of a man helping to extinguish a home fire with a garden hose and a third for a general news photo of a Special Olympian at a torch-lighting ceremony.

Sentinel writer Amy Calder also won a third place for her local column.

Former writer David Robinson won third place for a health story that appeared with Seamans’ photo story about the ailing parent.

The advertising department won third place for a supplement/special section with “Veterans Day 2011.”


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