‘County Kids’ Wins Awards

WESTPORT —  Connecticut’s County Kids magazine, a free parenting publication with a circulation of 45,000 throughout Fairfield, New Haven, Hartford, Middlesex, and Litchfield counties, won top national honors from the Parenting Publications of America (PPA), and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, the judges for the PPA’s awards of excellence, at the PPA’s annual convention held this year in Orlando, Florida from January 27 through 30.

PPA has member publications across the United States, Canada and Australia, with a combined circulation of nearly 7 million.

County Kids brought home four awards this year, the most earned by the local publication in any year. The magazine – which now has ten awards to its name, including Most Improved and General Excellence – is the only parenting publication serving Connecticut to have won any national excellence awards. The awards given to County Kids this year include the Bronze Award of Excellence: Special Supplement (for County Kids’  Healthy Everyday Realistic Solutions [HERS], a women’s health and wellness section) and the Silver Award of Excellence: Front Cover (for County Kids April 1999 cover on Kids and Art). County Kids also received two Gold Awards of Excellence for Advertising Design.

HERS was commended for its main focus of “addressing the needs of our woman readers – not as mothers, but as individuals.” “In a welcome move to recognize the complexity of modern women’s lives,” said Medill judges, “[HERS] goes beyond the obvious health related stories to look at other aspects of staying healthy.” HERS was also praised for its “willingness to mix stories that might not have made the pages of a less broad-minded publication.”

Lifelong residents of Connecticut, Tim Gagne (publisher/editor) of Newtown, Amy O’Neil (managing editor) of Middletown, and statewide sales representatives count community support as a measure of their continued success.

“The fact that we earned awards in editorial, design, and advertising categories proves County Kids’ strength across the board to both readers and advertisers,” said Mr Gagne. “I’m proud and honored that a prestigious journalism school like Medill has once again recognized County Kids’ commitment to being the premier magazine resource for parents in Connecticut.”