Oviedo Community News wins five awards for in-depth articles and series

It’s awards season for journalism, both statewide and nationally, and at the Florida Press Association’s annual awards gala on June 5 Oviedo Community News picked up five awards for our work. 

The honors build upon first-place awards last year for Local Government Reporting and in the Agricultural and Environmental Reporting category. This time around, five reporters and editors combined to bring home more accolades, with OCN winning for three collections of stories plus an in-depth investigation and two longform feature stories revealing the heart of the community through unknown struggles. 

Here’s a list of the award-winning work that OCN supporters helped make possible: 

• First Place, Feature Story: Profile: Space cats and flying pigs: The eccentric strength of Del Seaman’s Artistic Hand, by Isaac Benjamin Babcock
  
• Second Place, Education News: A collection of education stories by reporter Abe Aboraya, including one on the school board’s budget and student homelessness.
  
• First Place, Education feature: Once cancelled, Hagerty band camp returns to heroic soundtrack, by Isaac Benjamin Babcock.
  
• First Place, Health, Medical and Science Reporting: OCN’s multi-part deep dive on the public not being informed that long after a vote to include it, fluoride was not being added to their water because of a hidden chronically broken system. This included a multi-part investigation by reporter Eric Orvieto and OCN staff combined with individual stories by Isaac Benjamin Babcock and Abe Aboraya.
  
• Third Place, Faith and Family Reporting: Nazi graffiti incident raises questions about confronting hate was submitted, plus our solutions article and an explainer of our process. By Eric Orvieto, OCN Editor-in-Chief Megan Stokes and our former intern Maci Castillo.