From staff and wire reports

The Sun Journal Sunday was named Maine’s “Newspaper of the Year” at the annual Maine Press Association Better Newspaper Contest.

In the general excellence category, the Sun Journal also took home a second-place prize for its daily newspaper.

The Sunday paper has won the top prize three times in the last five years.

“I’m extremely happy,” Executive Editor Rex Rhoades said. “I think this is the strongest newsroom team we’ve ever had.”

Rhoades credited the newspaper’s owners, the Costello family, with keeping the Sun Journal strong.

“At a time when many papers are cutting staff, this is a reflection of the investment the Costello family places on local news,” Rhoades said.

The winners were announced Saturday night during the MPA’s annual Fall Conference at the Grand Summit Resort Hotel and Conference Center at Sunday River.

Members of the Minnesota Press Association judged the contest, on newspapers published between April 1, 2004, and March 31, 2005. In the general excellence category, newspapers were required to submit some entries published on dates that judges selected randomly.

The top prize in the daily category went to the Portland Press Herald. The Maine Sunday Telegram took second place honors in the Sunday category. The Bangor Daily News placed third in both contests.

Sun Journal’s place among the top papers was particularly gratifying, since the Portland and Bangor papers are nearly twice the Sun Journal’s size, Rhoades said.

The VillageSoup Times of Camden and Rockland won the Newspaper of the Year award among weeklies with less than 5,000 circulation, while The Republican Journal of Belfast won the top honor among the state’s larger weeklies.

VillageSoup Times, in just its second year in the Better Newspaper Contest, won the Newspaper of the Year award in the Weekly 1 class for the second year. The York Weekly took second place and The Camden Herald was third.

Among weekly papers with 5,000 circulation or more, The Republican Journal was named Newspaper of the Year for the first time since 1996-97. Second place in the competition went to The Courier-Gazette of Rockland and third place went to The Ellsworth American.

Also awarded Saturday night were the MPA’s top individual honors.

Stephen Betts, editor of The Courier-Gazette, was named Maine’s Journalist of the Year. Jennifer Doucette of the St. John Valley Times in Madawaska was honored as Advertising Person of the Year, and George Reichert of The Times Record in Brunswick was named Circulation Person of the Year.

The two-day MPA conference drew close to 200 people to Sunday River.

On Friday night the association inducted four new members into its Hall of Fame: Ray Gross, former editor and publisher of The Courier-Gazette; David Lamb, a University of Maine graduate who was a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times for 34 years; Steve Riley, who was a reporter and editor for Guy Gannett’s Portland and Waterville newspapers for nearly 40 years; and the late Lillis Towle Jordan, who was publisher of the Bangor Daily News from 1947 to 1955.