New Times Presses On

This past Friday, June 19, the Florida Press Association announced the winners of its annual Better Weekly Newspaper contest for material published during 1991. For the second year in a row, New Times won six awards in competition with weekly newspapers throughout the state.

Two first-place awards were given to the paper as a whole, one for overall graphic design and one for a special issue, the "Best of Miami," published in March 1991.

Staff writer Sean Rowe won the top award for in-depth news reporting for "Black Death," which examined the extraordinarily high murder rate among young black men in Dade County, so high that today it is more dangerous to grow up in some Miami neighborhoods than it was to fight in the Vietnam War.

Rowe was also awarded third place in the feature-story category for "You Can Get There From Here," in which he recounted his adventures circumnavigating Greater Miami in a canoe, paddling through canals and lakes.

Staff writer Steven Almond's "Blackboard Jungle," which won first place for sports stories, described the burgeoning popularity of basketball as the sport of choice in Puerto Rico.

Almond's two-part article "The Case From Hell," which chronicled the experiences of the Nogues family and their traumatic and continuing battles with the juvenile justice system, was awarded second place in the investigative reporting category.