Vail Daily receives awards at 2026 Society of Professional Journalists regional contest

Several journalists from the Vail Daily received awards at the 2026 Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism contest Saturday in Denver.

The contest is sponsored by the Colorado Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and brings together newsrooms from Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming to compete across several categories.

The 2026 contest saw the largest field ever with nearly 2,100 entries from 100 news media outlets and 25 freelancers. The entries were judged by journalists in southern California.

The Vail Daily competed among medium-sized newsrooms, where photographer Chris Dillmann won first and second place awards for climate photography and third place for social justice photography; assistant editor Sean Naylor received both second and third-place awards for headline writing; sports reporter Ryan Sederquist won both first and third place awards for his stories on Tracee Metcalfe and Lindsey Vonn; regional reporting team editor Ali Longwell won second place in environmental feature writing and third place in beat reporting for her coverage of wolf reintroduction in Colorado; Zoe Goldstein won second place in education news for her coverage of Turning Points USA clubs; and John LaConte won second place in column writing for his piece about celebrity wolf hunters.

“We are pleased to honor so many journalists and media outlets for their tireless journalistic efforts,” said Deb Hurley Brobst, SPJ Colorado Pro Chapter president and the contest’s coordinator. “We are seeing top-notch work from journalists throughout the region, no matter what the staff size.”