Simply the best! Brooklyn Paper wins five more top awards

The award-winning Brooklyn Paper has added more trophies to an overflowing display case, picking up top honors in five editorial and design categories from the Suburban Newspapers of America, a leading newspaper professional and trade organization.

Here’s the rundown for our latest first-place prizes:

• Our editorials, which won awards in 2007, were again called the best in the country by the SNA. The judges specifically cited three opinion pieces: “Another backroom deal” (Dec. 1, 2007), which picked apart a sweetheart arrangement for a Bruce Ratner project involving NYC Tech; “Downtown scores again” (Dec. 22, 2007), which called for less master-planning and more laissez-faire in rezonings; and “Adrift on the canal” (March 8, 2008), which supported residential development as a way of spurring a cleanup of the Gowanus Canal.

Here's the cover of the award-winning GO Brooklyn section that caught the judges' eyes.

“An award like that shows how important it is to have a real newspaper in Brooklyn,” Editor Gersh Kuntzman said in an announcement to the newsroom staff. “None of the other papers have the guts to cover Brooklyn the way we do.”

• Our entertainment section, GO Brooklyn (the “essential guide for the Borough of Kings”), was cited as the “Best Special Section.”

• GO Brooklyn’s design, by Art Director Leah Mitch, won for “Best Non-Page One Layout.”

And here's the award-winning inside-page design by Leah Mitch.

• The Paper also won for “Best Front Page” design. Judges cited Senior Editor Vince DiMiceli’s design work on three issues, including the bloody good Feb. 16, 2008 front page, the brilliant March 15, 2008 issue, and the historic Ikea grand opening issue on June 21, 2008.

• The Paper also won for our use of graphics to support our reporters’ great stories. The judges specifically mentioned a DiMiceli-generated graphic comparing the stylish Apple stores to a “Windows store” that had been proposed for the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower; plus a graphic representation of local complaints about the F train; and a nifty chart showing a proposed 1,000-foot tower in relation to existing skyscrapers in and around Brooklyn.

In 1997, DiMiceli’s front pages won first place kudos from the Independent Free Papers of America.

Graphics comparing the size of Brooklyn skyscrapers to a proposed Bruce Ratner tower (above), and an F line full of complaints (below) were cited by the judges.

In 2008, the newspaper won SNA awards as both “Newspaper of the Year” and “Editor of the Year.”

The SNA represents more than 2,400 daily and weekly newspapers in both suburban and urban community markets across the country. All together, SNA newspapers have a combined circulation of 22 million.

The awards were to be presented on Thursday night in Tampa, Fla.