Katie Rausch of The (Toledo) Blade and Joshua A. Bickel from ThisWeek Community Newspapers in Columbus are the ONPA News Photographers of the Year for their work in 2013. Rausch won in the large market category and Bickel won the small market category. Both are first time winners of the award.
Rausch has been with The Blade since 2012 and worked previously as a freelance photographer in Michigan and as a staff photographer at the Jackson (MI) Citizen Patriot. Rousch is a graduate of Michigan State University.
Bickel is the chief photographer at ThisWeek Community Newspapers, a group of 24 weekly newspapers that ring the Columbus area. Bickel previously worked at the Casper (WY) Star-Tribune and Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune, and has masters degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri.
Familiar names fill out the remainder of the POY winners list as Lisa DeJong and Gus Chan from The Plain Dealer finished second and third in the large market category while Barbara Perenic and Bill Lackey from the Springfield News-Sun finished second and third in the small market category.
Jenna Watson from Kent State University won the Larry Fullerton Photojournalism Scholarship. Madison Schmidt from the University of Cincinnati was the runner-up.
Jabin Botsford from Western Kentucky University was awarded Best of Show in the contest for his entry, “Cheerleaders” and also won the Student Photographer of the Year award. Botsford was an intern at The Columbus Dispatch during 2013. Alex Holt, from the University of Kentucky, placed second and Logan Riely, from Ohio University, won third in the student competition.
Jenna Watson from Kent State University won the Larry Fullerton Photojournalism Scholarship. Madison Schmidt from the University of Cincinnati placed second in the category.
Kent State University student Jacob Byk won the James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award for his entry “Greene County” which told the story of how the coal country of Greene County, Pennsylvania has been affected by the booming natural gas industry.
Judging the still categories for this years contest were Sue Ogrocki from the Associatd Press, David Stephenson from the University of Kentucky and Dave Weatherwax from The (Jasper, IN) Herald. The feature and team video
categories were judged by Eric Seals, an Emmy-award winning multimedia journalist and photographer for the Detroit Free Press and the audio slideshow and news and sports videos were judged by Curt Chandler, who teaches communications and multimedia journalism at Penn State University