ESTEVAN - The Estevan Mercury remains the standard by which newspapers in Saskatchewan are judged.
The venerable publication, which was founded in 1903 and remains Estevan's oldest business, was selected as the best overall paper for Class D - papers with a circulation of at least 6,500 - at this year's Saskatchewan Weekly Newspaper Association Awards, which were announced Thursday afternoon.
It's the third time in five years that the Mercury has been named best paper in its division.
The Mercury received a score of 970 out of 1,000 for best overall paper to finish 93 points ahead of the runner-up publication, the Swift Current Southwest Booster. The Mercury received a perfect score for community news, advertising content, presentation, local features and classified advertising, and it also received high grades for photography, advertising design and sports.
The Mercury was second for best editorial page, finishing with 90 out of 100 points. It had perfect scores for local content, general content, appearance/grammatical content and its cartoon.
Among the individual awards, David Willberg and Anastasiia Bykhovskaia finished third in the Best News Story category for their coverage of the events on Nov. 1, 2023, in Estevan that left two people dead and a member of the Estevan Police Service injured.
"It's a well-written story with all of the elements and voices. You also followed the case, over time, which is great. Well done!" wrote the judges.
Bykhovskaia also finished third for the top columnist award, her second straight year in the top three.
"Ana Bykhovskaia is an obvious challenger for top spot in years to come," states the comments from the judges. "Ana has a unique capability of organizing words that on being read, the reader is made to feel they've been speaking with her, much like in a face-to-face conversation. Her writing is clean, clear, polite, most interesting, and is inclusive with all of her community audience. Another shining example of the excellent journalism being published in Saskatchewan."
The next edition of the Mercury will have more on this story.
