Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: Preston-Fillmore County Journal Entry Title: Developed in-house by our team Entry Credit: Jason Sethre, Michelle Quanrud, Ellen Whalen, Taylor Case, Sara Schultz Judge Comment: Nice local news site. The site is very clean and because the publication company refuses non-local ads, the user experience is better. Navigation bars are simple and direct. Good job. One of the best news sites I have seen. One of the things that sets this entry apart from the others is that the home page is not too crowded. For each category, there is one "featured" story, with others in a bulleted list. This site almost took a lower placement due to the amount of news on the home page. It can be a great practice to highlight one to a few news items and then list/link others because some users don't want to have to scroll too much to get to other news categories. However, overall the site had a better overall layout than its closest news-site challenger.
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: MPLS - MN Women's Press Entry Title: Minnesota Women's Press Entry Credit: Mikki Morrissette Judge Comment: Nice website layout: clean and simple. Almost all stories have a photo attached. Good categorization on landing pages. Site includes a calendar and business directory. Good selection of items for intended audience. Nice work!
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Winona Post Entry Title: Winona Post website Entry Credit: Patrick Marek Judge Comment: Nice, simple site. Not a fan of the way the other news landing pages look. Too much text and too little photos. Thumbnail photos make a big difference. Maybe try to make the other pages more similar to the obituaries. Otherwise, nice site. Sometimes less is more and this site is a great example of that.
