Woohoo! Wrangler wins best in Army!

Ok, I admit it. I am officially out of the blogging habit.

Whereas I used to think of the blog constantly, I’ve weened myself off of it in the name of “taking a break” and have done too good of a job. Now, a whole week will go by before I notice the lack of a post.

This will change. I can’t pledge it in blood or anything, but this thing is really the only thing worth a damn during my normal daily routine. It connects me to friends, brings in awesome friends to comment (woot!) and generally makes me feel super good after a cathartic rant.

Speaking of feeling good, the Army-level journalist competition results finally came out today. For those out of the loop (which, given my infrequent posts, probably is everyone), I was selected as the FORSCOM journalist of the year. FORSCOM is the largest chunk of the U.S. Army, made up of all the units that deploy to places like Iraq–basically everyone who’s not in a training role and not in Europe. I was blown away at the honor!

During that level of competition, my newsletter “The Wrangler,” featured on my links at right, won second place. This was especially noteworthy since my public affairs (read journalist) shop in Iraq consisted of a sergeant first class and myself. The E7 was my boss and went to a lot of the meetings, giving me the time I needed to go on missions, convoys, take pictures and the like. Then, I’d come back and put together everything into a newsletter. I poured hours and hours into that damn newsletter, squeezing in pull quotes, and moving modules around on my 8×10 canvas so everything lined up and fit. That’s much easier described than practices, believe you, me.

Anyway, along came the Army-level event. I was the nominee for the journalist-of-the-year gig, and “The Wrangler” still got to compete, even though it got second.

I didn’t get the journalist-of-the-year nod, but our little powerhouse of a newsletter came back from behind to win best Army field publication! We beat out all the huge, full-fledged newspapers; which was a total surprise to me.

You see, they all had huge staffs dedicated solely to publishing their respective papers, along with support writers that put out sports sections, history lessons, etc. I always was jealous they had the resources to get theirs printed on professional printers and could spend so much time on varying their content.

Still, I’ll have to wait until I receive the judge’s official comments and critiques, but I guess we won them over somehow. I am very proud of that newsletter! It represented everything our PAO shop did over there. I also wanted to congratulate uber peep “Ian” for winning first place for his commentary. Good job, brutha! My former newspaper “The Turret” came close with a 2nd place finish. Yaarr!

God bless and I’ll talk to you all soon. Seriously!

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