Two Independent Record staff writers, Martin Kidston and Jason Mohr, won awards in the 2006 SPJ Excellence in Journalism Region 10 contest.

Mohr was honored for his "Town blog," hosted on Helenair.com, the IR's website. He won third place in the category "Best general news/commentary Web log," that included newspaper Web sites in Alaska, Montana, Oregon and Washington. First and second-place winners in the category were from the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Kidston received two awards among entries from Region 10 newspapers with circulations under 25,000. He earned a first place in reporting on minorities for his piece titled "In search of a better life," and third place in the Science and Technology field for his story called "A tale of tails."