Call Staff Reporter Gloria Lloyd received a first-place award in the Missouri Press Foundation’s 2014 Better Newspaper Contest.

Lloyd earned the first-place award in the category of Best Reporting Based on a Public Notice for two stories she wrote about the Mehlville Board of Education establishing the school district’s 2013 tax rate. Only one award was presented among all newspapers statewide in this category.

The Call also earned five other awards in the 2014 Better Newspaper Contest. The awards were presented in late September at the Missouri Press Association’s 148th annual Convention and Trade Show in Columbia.

The Call has earned awards in the Missouri Press Foundation’s Better Newspaper Contest for 15 of the past 16 years.

The 2014 awards were for stories published during 2013. Members of the Colorado Press Association served as judges for the contest.

Besides capturing a first-place award, Lloyd received an honorable-mention honor in the Best News Story category for an article she wrote about a judge ordering St. Louis County to pay three trash haulers $5.9 million. The judgment stemmed from a lawsuit the trash haulers filed over the county’s establishment of trash districts.

Of Lloyd’s stories, judges wrote, “Simply a good hard-news story. The reporter well explained the issue without legalese. It reads well.”

The Call also received two second-place awards, a third-place award and another honorable-mention honor.

Call staffers Lloyd, Mike Anthony and Megan Zimmerman received a third-place award for Best Website for the Call’s website. This is the third time the Call’s website has been honored by the Missouri Press Foundation.

Anthony, who serves as the newspaper’s executive editor, earned second-place awards for Best Coverage of Government and Best Columnist-Serious.

Anthony received the Best Coverage of Government honor for a series of stories he wrote about the 2013 Mehlville Fire Protection District Board of Directors election in which Mike Klund unsuccessfully challenged incumbent board Secretary Ed Ryan.

This is the third time the Call has been honored for Best Coverage of Government.

For the Best Columnist-Serious award, entrants must submit three columns.

Columns Anthony submitted included one headlined “Ex-school board members leave a conservative legacy,” that opined how former Mehlville Board of Education members Tom Diehl and Karl Frank Jr. were responsible for voters electing a conservative majority to the board.

Other submissions by Anthony called for then-Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District Board of Trustees Chairman James Buford to resign and took the Post-Dispatch to task for an editorial critical of then-Mehlville Superintendent Eric Knost.

Of Anthony’s three columns, judges wrote, “Taking on influential people and publications is the essence of local newspaper commentary and this entry delivers.

“Well done.”

Anthony previously received first-place, second-place, third-place and honorable-mention awards in the Best Columnist-Serious category.

An honorable-mention honor also was presented to Anthony in the category of Best Editorial Pages.

The Call previously has received first-place, second-place, third-place and honorable-mention honors in the Best Editorial Pages category.