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Gambit takes home 18 awards, including General Excellence and seven first-place honors.

Gambit Weekly received top honors at the Louisiana Press Association's annual competition for state newspapers, taking home a total of 18 awards, including General Excellence, in the 2003 Free Circulation & Special Interest Publication Competition and Individual Competition.

In awarding the General Excellence honor to Gambit Weekly, judges credited the paper's reporting and commentary, adding that "strong design throughout gives Gambit Weekly the edge in a very competitive field." The Baton Rouge Business Report, The Independent and The Times of Acadiana took second and third place and honorable mention, respectively.

Clancy DuBos' "Politics" column received a first-place award for Best Regular Column. In the Best News Story category, Allen Johnson Jr. won first place for "The Warrant Squad." In the same category, Katy Reckdahl received second place for "The Changing Face of AIDS" and honorable mention for "Who's Caring," a cover story about Charity Hospital. Reckdahl received a first-place honor for her work covering death penalty exonerations, in the category Best Continuing Coverage of a Governmental Issue.

Donn Young won first place for Best News Photo, for the cover photo that illustrated Reckdahl's "Who's Caring." Sara Roahen received third-place in Best Feature Story for her account of cooking a turducken. Gambit Weekly also received first place for Best Special Section, for its Best of Mardi Gras section.

Gambit Weekly received numerous additional awards in the 2003 LPA Individual Competition, Division C. Constance Adler took first place for her profile of Mardi Gras float designer Henri Schindler; Shala Carlson received second place for her profile of writer Tom Piazza; Katy Reckdahl won third for her article about a Muslim community in Mississippi; and Allen Johnson Jr. won honorable mention for a story about conscientious objector Stephen Funk. In the Individual Competition for Editorial Cartoon, Greg Peters won second place for his "Louisiana Scrapbook" and Harvey Pekar and Gary Dumm received an honorable mention for their comic biography of King Oliver. (Peters also took first and third places in that category for his work with The Independent in Lafayette.) Gambit Weekly's production department also earned top honors for its work. In the category Staff Generated ­ Color Over 1/2 Page, Jennie Westerman received first place for an ad for Gumbo Shop, and Dora Sison received an honorable mention for her ad for DeAngelo's. Westerman also received third place in the category Staff Generated ­ Color 1/2 Page or Under for an ad for Ladies Shoes Only.

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