Northeast Times,
Fishtown Star win awards

The Northeast Times and a sister publication operated by Broad Street Publishing, the Fishtown Star, earned three awards in the statewide 2008 Keystone Press Awards contest sponsored by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.
John Scanlon, editor of the Times, received two second-place awards in the contest’s weekly-newspaper division — one for column writing, the other for headline writing. Among his required three column submissions, the judges particularly acknowledged a column headlined Photo of slain guards needed to be seen, in which Scanlon wrote of what influenced his decision to publish a controversial staff photo of the shooting deaths of Joseph Alullo and William Widmaier, two armored-truck guards slain during an ATM robbery at a Wachovia Bank branch on Bustleton Avenue in October.
His second-place award in headline writing similarly was granted for three submissions. Those headlines included one for a story by a Times sports columnist who commented on the poor 2007 season of Phillies pitcher Adam Eaton: Watching Adam pitch is Eaton him alive.
The other award-winner, Brian Rademaekers, claimed first place in the category of ongoing news coverage for his thorough series of Fishtown Star stories on the planned SugarHouse Casino along the Delaware River.
The Keystone judges lauded Rademaekers for his varied and in-depth coverage of the struggles that have pitted casino advocates in the neighborhood against those who fear that casino gaming will doom the Fishtown and Northern Liberties neighborhoods.
Rademaekers, a staffer since August 2006 who recently was named Star managing editor, received his first Keystone honor. Scanlon, Times editor since 1987, has received seven Keystone awards, in addition to the newspaper’s "Best of Class" selection in 1995 among Pennsylvania weekly newspapers with circulations of 10,000 or more. ••