We’re running a short report Thursday listing some awards Wenatchee World journalists won. The brief will report World journalists won awards in the 2007 Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism competition.

The awards cover SPJ’s Region 10, which includes entries from Montana, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. The World staffers competed with other papers with a circulation of 25,001 to 65,000.
The brief will list all the winners, but I wanted to focus on three:

• Rachel Schleif, first place in education reporting for a report on autism that focused on the stories of local people and schools struggling to find a way — and the money — to reach and teach their autistic kids. Rachel proposed this story and I was skeptical at first because so much has been written about autism. But Rachel worked hard over many weeks to land this fine report. Click here to read it.

• Jefferson Robbins, first place in special report and enterprise reporting. This is an in-depth report that lives on at The World’s Web site.

Click here to check it out. Former features editor and news pal Andy Wahl saw creating projects like this as a way of establishing The World as the place to go for information about all things North Central Washington.

• Christine Pratt, first place in business reporting for a report on a successful mom-and-pop bank in Winthrop, Farmers State Bank.

Chris has a keen eye for the good yarn and a way of making the difficult easy to understand. Click here to check out her take on a remarkable small-town institution.