DBT wins 5 regional press awards

WILMINGTON – Delaware Business Times won five awards in the 2022 Maryland, Delaware, D.C. Press Association contest, including a first-place award for editorial writing for papers of its size.

The latest award wins for DBT come after the paper won nine awards in the Delaware Press Association’s 2022 contest last month.

Editor Jacob Owens, associate editor Katie Tabeling and research and online coordinator Sabrina Gonzalez all earned awards in the larger MDDC contest. All of its 2022 awards came in Category F with papers of a similar size circulation, which includes the Baltimore Business Journal and Newark Post, among other competitors.

“We are thrilled to again be recognized by our peers with multiple awards for covering Delaware’s business community. The outstanding journalism our team produces is relied on by tens of thousands of readers across the state and we look forward to raising the bar for them again this year,” said Michael Reath, publisher of Delaware Business Times. 

Owens won a first-place award for editorial writing for his June column “Is Carney the last of his kind?” that discussed the likely leftward tilt of future Democratic leaders compared to the more centrist-inclined Carney.

He also won a second-place award for business reporting for his May 2022 cover story “The Break Down,” which detailed the work of global shipping container innovator Staxxon.

Katie Tabeling’s story “The Builder Brothers” won second place for feature profile, one of the most difficult categories to place.

Meanwhile, Tabeling won a second-place award for feature profile writing for her November story “The Builder Brothers” that profiled the rise of Sussex County development magnates Chris and Preston Schell. The feature profile competition is among the program’s most difficult to win, receiving dozens of entries every year from around the region.

She also shared a second-place award with DBT’s 2022 summer intern, Emma Reilly, for land use reporting for their June story “Sussex’s Big Boom” that looked into the exploding housing growth in southern Delaware and the impact it is having on affordable housing.

Finally, Gonzalez won a second-place award for general website excellence for her work last year in redesigning and updating DBT’s website, adding new features for subscribers and non-subscribers alike.