LEWISTON — The Sun Media Group has awarded its inaugural best revenue, best innovation and most valuable people awards to recognize employee accomplishments in 2017.

The “Best Innovation” award went to the reporting, editing and design team behind the yearlong Basilica Sunday project.

Starting in October 2016, once a month the team produced a section-front feature, including pieces on the building’s materials, the artisans who crafted its incredible architecture, the unusual and religious art contained there, the building’s history and the people who now lovingly care for it all.

Then, on all other Sundays of each month the B-Plus section featured a single photo page examining, for instance, the religious statues and the stained-glass windows, the main alter and multiple side alters.

It was, without a doubt, a comprehensive examination of history, art and architecture, religion and community.

The team included Managing Editor/days Mark Mogensen, freelance writers Julie-Ann Baumer and Brooke Nasser, staff photographers Russ Dillingham, Andree Kehn and Daryn Slover, staff writers Steve Collins and Steve Sherlock, Web Editor Carl Natale and Chief Designer Heather McCarthy.

Multiple awards were given for most valuable people, including Mike Blanchet, Matt Daigle, Mark Hews and the production team at the Sun Journal.

Blanchet has been an employee of Sun Media Group for over 20 years as an advertising account executive and is based in the Farmington bureau.

In addition to working very closely with advertisers, Blanchet is president of the board of directors of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, and volunteers with the Downtown Farmington Business Association. One of his special projects in 2017 is a special section celebrating the 150th anniversary of Franklin Savings Bank, which will be published in 2018.

Staff Writer Matt Daigle was selected as an MVP after pulling double duty for three months early in the year, picking up assignments from the Sun Journal’s Lewiston office so staff there could concentrate on its award-winning investigation into the extradition of Meghan Quinn from Florida to Maine.

Daigle picked up extra work on the cops and court beat, with its irregular hours and often traumatic situations, while also carrying on with regular assignments from his home base at the Norway bureau.

Daigle started at the SJ as a part-time reporter in the Rumford bureau and, in the nearly five years since, he’s bloomed as a feature writer and became the chief courts and cops reporter for Oxford County.

Hews works in the SMG circulation department and helps coordinate delivery of more than 14 products published by the Forecasters for weekly, monthly and seasonal distribution. One of his accomplishments last year was expanding circulation of the Maine Women Magazine to Lewiston-Auburn.

A most valuable prize went to the SJ production crew for its pressure-filled work on the evening of Sept. 15, a Friday. That night the Portland Press Herald’s press broke down and the Lewiston team was called upon to publish that newspaper, along with Portland’s usual print jobs for the Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel and Journal Tribune. That extra work was done on top of the team’s regular duties printing the Sun Journal and the Bangor Daily News in the overnight.

The team included Mark Hunt, Josh Magaw, Paul Misiunas, Randy Baril, Marc Breton, Patrick Merritt and Mark Gerber.

The Best Revenue Effort award went to sales teammates Beth Murphy and Ann Duddy for Maine Women’s Magazine Sales Success. The two beat MWM’s revenue budget every month of 2017, and have been central contributors to the continued growth of the annual Maine Women’s EXPO.

Sun Media Group includes the Sun Journal, the Franklin Journal, Livermore Falls Advertiser, Advertiser Democrat, Rumford Falls Times, The Bethel Citizen, the Rangeley Highlander, the Penobscot Times in Old Town, and the Current and Forecaster publications in the greater Portland area.

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