Jeff Ritter is ONPA Television Photographer of the Year

The results are not all in yet, but the contest for ONPA Television Photographer of the Year is over and has been won by Jeff Ritter from WBNS-TV in Columbus. The sports feature category remains to be judged, but due to the entries in that category the top three places in the POY competition won’t be affected by those results. The results of the sports feature category will be posted as soon as they become available.

Ritter received first place in Feature & News Feature and won Best of Show with his story “Lima Company – A portrait of service” a story well deserving of the award. Placing second in the POY competition is Eric Frisbee from WHIO-TV in Dayton who placed first in General News. Third place POY went to David Bradford of WJW-TV in Cleveland. Bradford, who has won the POY title the last three years, placed first in Deadline Photography.

Consistency was the key in the POY competition as the top three photographers all placed with four of their five category entries and all three placed in the top three in last year’s competition.

The ONPA Station of the Year award goes to WBNS-TV in Columbus. WJW-TV in Cleveland placed second and WHIO-TV in Dayton placed third.

Contest chairman David Bradford reports that this years entries were all very good and the competition very close. Critiques and comments sheets will be available at the seminar in Columbus. The winners should be available for viewing on the ONPA Web site by Wednesday according to Bradford.

This was Bradford’s last year running the POY contest as he will now take over the quarterly clip contest and entries should be directed to him and not Bill Reagan. Contest rules are available on the ONPA Web site by clicking on the ONPA Directory link on the home page.