Courier Herald staff honored with eight Georgia Press Association awards

The best of The Courier Herald’s coverage, columns and special publications from 2025 were recognized with eight awards in the Georgia Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest earlier this month. 

Two gold medals, four silvers and a couple of bronze were included in the slew of accolades racked up by individual reporters, and the staff as a whole, when winners were announced during the organization’s 139th convention June 11-13 at the Jekyll Island Club. 

“These awards are a testament to the high-quality, community-centered journalism The Courier Herald staff produces every day,” said Georgia Trust for Local News executive director Cynthia DuBose. “Their commitment to informing the people of Dublin and Laurens County is unwavering.”

Top prizes for staff reporter Kyle Dominy, whose acclaimed “New Southern Dad” column extended its streak of first-place awards, and sports editor Clay Reynolds, who was tops in the sports coverage category, headlined the newsroom’s strong showing in a return to the contest’s “B” division, which is comprised of the state’s largest sub-daily papers. 

Senior reporter Payton Towns III and staff writer Rodney Manley joined both of the above with a hand in the remaining six honors across a variety of photography, sports, column-writing and special section categories that made this year another in a tradition of outstanding performances in the competition over much of the past decade. 

The contest, highlighting “outstanding achievements in newspaper journalism,” was broken down into five circulation-based divisions that drew a total of 2,273 entries. 

See the GPA’s full list of statewide winners here.

“Our team works hard every day to produce quality local journalism, and it’s rewarding to see that work recognized by our peers,” said GTLN deputy executive director Danyale Starley. “I’m proud of our entire dedicated staff and the commitment they have to serving our readers. These awards are well deserved and reflect the best in community journalism.”

A look at the winning entries…

The first-place recognition for Dominy’s NSD came once again in the lifestyle/feature column category, which encompasses a broad range of subject matter from food/movie reviews and how-to tutorials to the homespun slices of life that make up his weekly writings. 

The collection of winning submissions were easily among his most memorable from the past year: A humorous acknowledgement of the lack of athletic ability he shares with his son; a more reflective meditation on mortality and aging; and a tale equal parts hilarious and disgusting about the “School day horror show” that ensued when the family discovered some months-old leftovers inside a lunchbox on the first day of the new school year. 

“It puts a different perspective than anything I’ve read before, inside of Dad’s mind is a thing that kids (and adults) wonder throughout life,” the judge wrote. “It’s good to see someone putting to paper exactly that.” 

Dominy was joined on the podium by Towns, whose selections from an inaugural department entitled “Man About Town” were named runners-up in the same category. 

Two of his entries, looking back on the experience of roles in Dublin Community Theatre productions of “Guys and Dolls” last summer and “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” this past November, revolved around a newfound interest in theater for he and wife Jill that was a major theme in his writing throughout the year. The other called back memories of a simpler time, and jamming out to a variety of classic “hits” with family along road trips in his youth.

Dominy captured second place in the spot news photo division as he snapped a colorful and compelling shot of a locomotive that smacked into an SUV at an unsignaled crossing the morning of March 13. The scene, showing police and fire responders looking on at the vehicle – pushed a ways down the tracks with airbags deployed – in the morning sunlight, illustrated a great sense of relief that its unsuspecting driver escaped the collision uninjured. 

Comments read: “Dramatic photograph and so glad no one was hurt!” 

Towns also received second place for breaking news writing with an assortment of gripping reports from his law enforcement and public safety beats, including a man’s arrest for setting fires at a string of churches and dumpsters on a downtown arson spree and a shootout-turned-car chase through multiple counties in June, as well as a fatal house fire in July whose intense flames met Dublin firefighters with a challenging battle. 

Reynolds’ first-place sportswriting entry was a trio of game recaps chronicling landmark games in the streak of 13 wins that made up a historic West Laurens football season last fall, each coinciding with a legendary performance by the Raiders’ superstar running back Ty Cummings. 

His state-class single game rushing performance, to the tune of eight touchdowns on a record 613 yards, highlighted the account of the Sept. 26 boat race with Baldwin that was one of the campaign’s most remarkable moments. But additional stories in the package covered some equally massive wins as Cummings’ 253-yard effort contributed to a total-team collab in a region championship-clinching 10th victory against Westside Augusta Oct. 30 and an electric four-score night helped West take care of second-round playoff challenger Oconee County on Nov. 21. 

The contest judge called it “a difficult category to judge due to the tremendous amount of work shown by each entry,” but wrote that “This entry felt the clearest overall, the most complete, and offered the most perspective concerning what the games meant at the time from a historical standpoint.” 

Comments went on to compliment the creative structure of the pieces, whose animated style rose a bit above that of the typical game write-up: “The leads of this group of stories were a ‘little extra’ and/or a bit more ‘featurey’ than the other stories in this group.” 

Reynolds also received a third-place citation in sports feature-writing for a group of profiles that were a part of his widely-read series “The Sidelines,” highlighting the off-field work, hobbies and interests of a coach or coaches at each local high school: The partnership of East Laurens power couple Dwayne and Danielle Lowther, Dr. John Williams’ unique career crossover as doctor and hoops coach, the bustling barbecue business of Dublin’s Don Vandygriff and West Laurens head football coach Kip Burdette’s offseason training toward some major marathon ambitions. 

“This submission is filled with stories that are easy to read and enjoyable,” the judge commented. “The writer shows a nice ability in storytelling. Nice job.” 

The full staff shared in a pair of special publication awards saluting a fall printing of outdoors tabloid Porters Guide to Hunting and Fishing as a second-place sports feature section, and the first-ever Christmas edition of Discover Dublin as a third-place themed magazine. 

Judges highlighted the popular recreational insert’s quality and variety of content, which included features on a local couple’s art of trapping and Trinity Christian School’s new clay shooting team, a recipe for fried quail, reader-submitted photos and various other informational stories of interest to local outdoorspeople. 

“Section highlights sport/pastime that is underrepresented in media — even local media. Advertising throughout, good layout, good stories and contributed photos featuring lots of names and faces,” 

The Christmas ‘zine presented a spread of holiday cheer in the form of feature stories on Southern Cypress Christmas Tree Farm and decorations artist Flo Shepherd, a profile of longtime Salvation Army bell-ringer Logan Bush, an accounting of local Christmas traditions and roundup of holiday happenings around the community.  

Congrats to our colleagues…

The Georgia Trust for Local News’ haul of awards included five others received by sister publications. 

The Houston Home Journal‘s Sandra Hernandez took first and second place in the Division B feature photo category. 

Columnist Jack Bagley, of the Manchester Star-Mercury Vindicator, received third- and second place respectively with his humorous and lifestyle/feature column submissions in Division D. 

A first-place award went out to former Albany Herald reporter Lucille Lanigan for business writing in Division B. 

Manchester-based publisher John Kuykendall was also honored with induction to the GPA’s Golden Club, in recognition of recently reaching a 50-year service milestone in the journalism industry.