Reaching milestones
On Saturday, the first milestone for 2026 was reached for the Northern Wyoming News with another coming with the Feb. 5 issue (in two weeks).
Saturday, the Northern Wyoming News, a weekly newspaper in the Hanway division of the Wyoming Press Association, earned the top photography prize, the Robert Warner Photography Award. This was a first for the Northern Wyoming News. This award is one of the five major awards presented to newspapers at the winter convention.
We are extremely proud of our staff at the Northern Wyoming News. Reporters Sean Mortimer and Kat McMahon and editor Karla Pomeroy earned eight “Pacemaker” awards for photos, including one for Best Use of Photos that recognizes “publications that practice and promote high-quality photojournalism,” according to the WPA contest rules.
Taking photos is one of the best parts of our job. Just four weeks into the new year we have visited East Side and West Side to capture some candid moments on the playgrounds as classes resumed, we have documented the arrival of the new exhibit at the Washakie Museum & Cultural Center, STEAM Saturday at the museum (in this issue), 4-H Fabric and Fashion skills class (in this issue), and, of course, in our sports section we have been documenting the many athletes in Ten Sleep, Worland and Thermopolis.
You can see the full write-up about our awards on A11 that also includes our sports editor Alex Kuhn earning top honors for his sports column Hear Me Out.
The second milestone coming is completing our seventh year as a weekly and beginning our eighth year as the Northern Wyoming News with the Feb. 5 issue. In February 2019 we returned to the Worland newspaper roots publishing as a weekly. The Worland Grit, which was started in 1905 was a weekly newspaper. In 1939 it became a daily with the Northern Wyoming Daily News and back to a weekly in 2019.
Our long history of chronicling the news in Washakie County and the Big Horn Basin began 121 years ago and while things have changed in how the paper is published, how we lay out pages, how we get our stories, write our stories and take those award-winning photos, our vision and mission remains the same providing fair and accurate stories about the people, events and issues that affect the lives of you, our readers.
We thank you, our readers, as well as our many advertisers, for being along for the ride on these two milestones and joining us for many milestones ahead not just for us but for our community.