Home Our Diocese Dialog website wins third place in national Catholic Press Association contest, two...

Dialog website wins third place in national Catholic Press Association contest, two photographs also cited

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A jouster closes in on the ring during St. Joseph Horse Show & Jousting at St. Joseph Church grounds in Cordova, Md. The Dialog/Don Blake

The Dialog won third place for best website in the national Catholic Press Association contest and a pair of photographs that appeared in the newspaper earned second- and third-place honors. The contest is open to all CPA-member Catholic news websites in the U.S. and Canada.

The newspaper for the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington relaunched its website, thedialog.org, two years ago and has experienced significant readership growth since that time.

From Dover to the Moon.

Year-over-year online readership was more than 40 percent ahead of previous year before the coronavirus pandemic. After the pandemic hit the United States and churches were closed, The Dialog web traffic increased three-fold, averaging more than 5,000 page views per day. The newspaper print edition is distributed in churches and publication was suspended.

Journalists Don Blake and Mike Lang also received awards for photographs taken with local stories published last year.

Blake won second place for “Sport of Rings” — a photo taken for coverage of the annual ring jousting tournament at St. Joseph’s in Cordova, Md.

Lang won third place for “From Dover to the Moon” — a photo with a story about men who worked for ILC Dover, the company that designed and made spacesuits, speaking to students at Holy Cross School.

The awards were announced during a video stream announcement program July 2.

The 2020 Catholic Media Conference was held virtually using digital technology due to the coronavirus pandemic.