Montemayor captures Texas press awards

Candise Montemayor of Fort Smith, who works as a public information technician in the Public Relations Office at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, has won two awards in the 2010 competition sponsored by the North and East Texas Press Association.

Montemayor took fourth place in the Journalist of the Year competition after being selected from a field of writers from 10 other publications in the semi-weekly division of the 2010 Better Newspaper Contest. The Association required sample stories for entrants to have been published during a specified two-month period.

Since Montemayor began her position at UAFS in November last year, samples of her work were provided through her previous employer, the Burleson Star in Burleson, Texas. She was also awarded a fourth place in feature writing in the same division, with entry samples taken from the entire year.

Montemayor was pleased to hear the contest results.

“It’s an honor to be recognized among other seasoned professionals in the field of journalism,” she said. “To place in the category of Journalist of the Year is a particularly nice node from the press association.”

When she worked at Burleson, she also contributed to five other newspapers which were all owned as part of The Star Group, serving Johnson and Tarrant counties of North Central Texas.

Montemayor previously worked for other newspaper and magazine publications in Texas and Oregon. The winners of the competition were announced recently in Fort Worth.