Durell Godfrey, The East Hampton Star’s longtime staff photographer and a fixture at community events from Montauk to Southampton, has once again been named one of New York State’s top photographers. At the New York Press Association’s annual conference last week in Saratoga Springs, The Star’s newsletter also repeated in winning first place in the Best Newsletter category, capping a successful awards season for the paper.
Judges praised Ms. Godfrey’s eye and attention to detail in awarding her second place in the Photographer of the Year contest. “This photographer understands their community and shows wisdom in how to document the daily life of the residents,” they wrote. “Clearly, the landscape of this region is a large part of the community identity, and this photographer capitalizes on the human interaction with the environment. This is a pretty lovely canvas to photograph against. The photography is sometimes quite quiet and thoughtful.”
In the Best Newsletter category, the judges praised the volumes of information packaged both attractively and strategically each week. This is the second time in four years The Star has won that award. Its curators are Mark Segal, arts editor; Carissa Katz, managing editor; Baylis Greene, associate editor; Matt Charron, assistant production manager and digital imaging specialist, and Christine Sampson, former deputy managing editor.
Ms. Katz earned a second-place Feature Writing award for her profile of Jack Graves, The Star’s popular sports editor and columnist, on the occasion of his June 2024 induction into the Press Club of Long Island’s Journalism Hall of Fame. “A good inside tribute to the life of a journalist, well written. Enjoyed reading it,” wrote the judges.
Christopher Gangemi, a reporter who was a past NYPA Rookie of the Year winner, took home a second-place award for Best News or Feature series for his dogged coverage of the East Hampton Village volunteer ambulance transition. The judges commented, “This is an excellent series of stories, showing how to take messy local political issues and distill them in a way that makes them easy for the readers to understand. It’s admirable that the writer was able to not go down the rabbit holes local political officials threw his way and maintain focus on the main story — great work.”
The Express News Group, which publishes 27east.com, four weekly newspapers, Express Magazine, and the 27Speaks podcast, was among the top overall finishers. Also solidly representing the East End among the winners were Dan’s Papers, owned by Schneps Media; the Times-Review Media Group on the North Fork and Shelter Island, and Riverhead Local, an online publication.