The Valdosta Daily Times has been recognized as the best newspaper in its division for the sixth consecutive year. Your community newspaper has been recognized as one of the best newspapers in Georgia year after year, and we are humbled by the honors.

Specifically, this year the paper was feted for providing strong local news coverage, strong editorials, effective column writing and community service, sports photography, enterprise reporting and feature writing, along with several other categories.

Each day we work hard to get it right, to report facts, celebrate our community and hold the powerful accountable.

The Times was recognized Friday evening at the annual Better Newspaper Contest Awards Ceremony at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel.

Our community can know that your community newspaper is leading the way in the state of Georgia when it comes to covering the things you want and need to know.

Each year, The Times competes in one of the most competitive divisions of the state press association’s Better Newspaper Contest and being regarded in the same league as the other great papers in the same class is an honor all of its own.

We are proud of the newspaper staff and believe we have a wonderful team, a small, hardworking staff mostly made up of young journalists — and a few veterans — who are passionate and care about what they do, working diligently each day to do right things in right ways.

Among the recognitions we received this year was the Community Service Award that recognizes the newspaper that shows the greatest commitment to serving its readership area, primarily through solutions journalism. This year that honor was bestowed because of exhaustive reporting on the prison system, the lack of transparency and high number of inmate deaths.

It is also noteworthy The Valdosta Daily Times was recognized for its overall news coverage. We are so proud of our entire team that works together each day to make this kind of local news coverage possible.

We thank the thousands of people who read the newspaper each day online and in print.

We are, of course, honored by these awards but our greatest honor, by far, is the fact that so many of you bring us into your homes and allow us to be a small part of your lives through our coverage of this wonderful community which we are all fortunate to call home.

We remain committed to being Your News. Your Voice. Your Times.