Columns by Cascadia Daily News Executive Editor Ron Judd were honored in the Best of the West journalism contest, announced April 9.
Judd’s portfolio of five columns won second place in the General Interest Column Writing category. Also recognized were Anita Chabria of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Hoeven of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Best of the West is a journalism contest for newspapers, magazines and news websites in 14 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
Judges said Judd “addresses topics with a cool passion for his readers.”
The five winning columns, viewable outside CDN’s paywall, were:
- An ode to the final Boeing 747, a machine that changed the world, and defined a Northwest way of life.
- A musing on the life cycle of chinook salmon that perish in a Bellingham stream.
- An account of the apparent lack of accountability for the police shooting of a motorist in Skagit County.
- A vow to join a battle against any renewed effort to shut down or impede independent local news organizations.
- A plea to help fill the bins at the local food bank in a time of unprecedented need.
Judd is a veteran journalist who worked for more than three decades as a reporter and columnist at The Seattle Times before helping found CDN in 2021 in Bellingham, his place of residence since 2001.
