Journalists and photographers from the Colorado Springs Gazette, Denver Gazette and Colorado Politics won 22 awards from the Colorado Press Association on Saturday. 

The stories ranged from drought coverage and its impact on a fifth-generation rancher in El Paso County to the toll that the Central 70 project has taken on two Denver neighborhoods.

Journalists working for the newspapers won 13 first-place awards and nine second-place awards. Additionally, students from CU Boulder’s News Corps program, in collaboration with The Denver Gazette, won first place for the best editorial collaboration. 

The first prize stories included: 

• High and Dry: Colorado In Drought — 5th generation El Paso County rancher hit with disaster by Forrest Czarnecki won first place for best environmental story. It is part of the Colorado Springs Gazette’s “High and Dry Series” and follows the life of Gary Paul. Paul and other ranchers were among the hardest hit by the 2020 drought, where Denver recorded 6 inches less precipitation than average.
• “Denver’s Central 70 project: Digging in troubled ground” was a collaboration between University of Colorado-Boulder students Tayler Shaw, Lauren Smith and Tory Lysik and The Denver Gazette’s Carol McKinley. This story details the lingering effects of highway construction and the impact the Central 70 project will continue to have on residents in two Denver neighborhoods. 
• The 2021 Out There Colorado Summer/Fall guide took first place for best editorial special section. 
• “Charging Ahead: What must Colorado do to get nearly a million vehicles on the road by 2030?” by Joey Bunch and Dennis Huspeni nabbed a first place win for best environmental story. This story details all the challenges associated with Gov. Jared Polis’ objective of getting one million electric vehicles on Colorado roads by 2030. 
• “Right to Record,” a series by Ernest Luning and Michael Karlik of Colorado Politics, won first place for best series or ongoing coverage. “Right to Record” explored a bystander’s right to record police. 
• “Risky Analogy” by Michael Karlik won the first-place prize for best public service project and covers the divide between appellate judges and trial judges using illustrations in a courtroom. 
• Scott Weiser and Luige Del Puerto won the top prize in the best news story category for their coverage of a spike in the price of utilities in December of last year.
• Evan Wyloge and Marianne Goodland took first place for the best investigative story package, “Redistricting.”
• Joey Bunch, Marianne Goodland and Luige Del Puerto won first place for the best health enterprise/health feature story. The story covered kids’ mental health amid a surge of gun violence in Colorado and the country’s problem with mass shootings. 
• Ernest Luning won the first-place prize for best headline writing with this gem: “The South Platte’s dirty past promises a pristine future.” The story details the troubles faced by the South Platte River, but looks to the future of the river as groups and governments try to revitalize it. 
• Marianne Goodland made the judges chuckle more than anyone else and took first place in the best humorous column category. Her chronicles of the great (or terrible, depending on who you ask) rubber band war added a dimension of humor to the statehouse politics coverage. 
• Nichole Montanez of the Colorado Springs Gazette won first place for best cover design. 
• Chancey Bush earned a first-place prize for best feature photograph. 

Second-place prizes:

• Christian Murdock of the Colorado Springs Gazette won two second-place prizes for best photography portfolio and his Ute Mountain Tribal Park gallery won for best slideshow. 
• Chancey Bush won second place in sports photography for a picture titled “Upended.”
• Marianne Goodland won second place for best agriculture story when she covered Polis’ ill fated “MeatOut Day” and the resulting surge in beef and other meat product purchases. 
• Colorado Politics earned a second place win for ongoing series and coverage for its “River Towns” series. It covered towns along Colorado’s rivers and sought to “tell the story of a state as reflected in its water, its people and its future, with the past as prologue.”
• Ernest Luning won second place for serious column writing for his December column “Trail Mix: Candidate switcheroos are nothing new in Colorado.” 
• Marianne Goodland’s “Capitol M: Thank God it’s Sine Die” earned her a second-place prize. 
• Joey Bunch won second place for his River Towns story that covered the history of the Big Thompson River and Estes Park.
• Marianne Goodland and Pat Poblete won for their investigative piece covering statehouse finances, including detailing the 30 days of spending when the statehouse was not in session. 
• Joey Bunch of Colorado Politics won a second-place prize in the Public Service Project category for his coverage of criminal friendly public policy leading to rising crime rates in Denver.