Letter from the Editor: New Jersey SPJ Awards

To the Readers,

I wanted to share some good news with all of you. Last week, I found out that I am a winner in the annual New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism Awards. I won first place for Online News Reporting for my coverage of the Matt Kravetsky issue last year. As you may recall, Matt Kravetsky was the teacher at Tamaques School who was trying to keep his job after being denied tenure and gained the support of hundreds in the community. During the coverage, I wrote a total of 13 stories on the issue from May to July of last year.

The other awards in this category went to John Mooney and Tom Johnson from NJ Spotlight for coverage of the state's involvement in the Race to the Top education program and for coverage of energy costs in New Jersey.

I would like to thank New Jersey SPJ for this award and I would like to thank everyone here at Patch for their support, which allows me to be able to do the work that I do. I would also like to thank all of you, for reading Patch everyday and having Westfield be an active community with many things going on and an endless supply of stories to tell.

I will be accepting the award during a ceremony in Newark next month. I will be sure to share some photos from the ceremony with all of you.

John