We came home as winners once again in the state’s Better Newspapers Contest.

The winners were announced at the 77th Annual Convention of the Arizona Newspapers Association, held at the Wild Horse Pass Hotel and Casino southeast of Phoenix on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 23 and 24.

The Times received first place awards in the non-daily categories of Best Public Notice Section and Best Classified Section. Sales Rep Duke Kirkendoll received a Third Place in the Best Color Paid Ad Series category for a series of ads he created for FireRock Country Club.

At the Saturday annual meeting luncheon, Manuel Coppola was installed as president of the ANA coming here. He is publisher of the Sierra Vista Herald and the Nogales International.

He said 77 percent of consumers surveyed said that they rely on local newspapers, community news and information, cross-platforms (print, social media and apps) and demos, according to MediaVillage.com.

“We have powerful data to dispel the notion that the role of newspapers is somehow obsolete,” Coppola said. It is gratifying to me, for example, to see how many young adults are gravitating to newspapers for a career despite all the negativity.

“They come as starry-eyed as we were when we started. There’s your proof that there’s a future in this industry.”

I talked to my good friend, Bob Sweeney, a publisher from the Denver area, who attended the National Newspaper Association’s convention in Franklin, Tennessee, which was held the same weekend.

He told me that the spirits were high at that convention also.

“I believe we’re going to survive this latest challenge to newspapers,” he said.

“We have to give the people more local news and photos, that’s what community newspapers do best.”

Incidentally, we were judged the fourth best non- daily in the country in our circulation category. The judges wrote: This is an impressive publication with lots of community interest stories packed into the pages. There is a nice variety of local coverage. It would be nice if a little more white space could be utilized so that everything isn’t so tight.

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Well, summer is officially over, and it couldn’t have ended on a more positive note. That was some rain we had last Wednesday.

And the temperatures have dropped into the comfortable range. Friday we come to the end of another season, the Monsoon. We didn’t have any real damaging storms, but we did get a couple of heavy rains in parts of town. One afternoon storm dropped over 2.6 inches of rain at my home.

Don’t think that even though monsoon season has ended, that the chances of a heavy rain storm have ended. An occasional hurricane can come up the Sea of Cortez and drop considerable rainfall on Arizona in the fall.

My first experience with that was in 1972 when I was living in Scottsdale. The remnants of a tropical storm dropped several inches of rain, and the City of Scottsdale passed out sandbags to certain areas of the city.

Enjoy the milder weather.