The winners of this year’s Great Plains Journalism Awards, sponsored by the Tulsa Press Club, were announced Friday. AY Media Group’s Dustin Jayroe won first place in the Magazine Lifestyle Writing category.
This year’s Great Plains awards was the 13th-annual iteration of the competition, which represent journalism excellence in print, online, TV and magazines in an eight-state region, including Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota. The awards luncheon featured Jennifer Loren as a distinguished lecturer. Loren is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and director of the Cherokee Nation film office.
According to the Tulsa Press Club, a near-record number of entries were submitted for this year’s competition in dozens of categories from “the region’s most well-respected media organizations.” Finalists and winners were selected from a “distinguished panel of judges,” many of whom are Pulitzer Prize winners.
Jayroe serves as editor of both AY About You and the Arkansas Mental Health Guide magazine, and as a contributing editor for Arkansas Money & Politics. This marks AY Media Group’s first Great Plains Journalism Awards recognition.
Inductees into the Great Plains Journalism Hall of Fame were also announced at the awards luncheon, which included: Sonny Albarado (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette), Jeannette Cooperman (St. Louis Magazine), David Fritze (Oklahoma Watch), Wayne Greene (Tulsa World), Sam Jones (RSU-TV) and James Goodwin (Oklahoma Eagle).
READ MORE: AY Media Group Take Top Honors in 2021 Diamond Journalism Awards
