The Coastal Star was honored by the Florida Press Club with 17 overall awards, including five first-place honors, announced Jan. 31 during a ceremony in West Palm Beach. Staff photo/The Coastal Star
By Henry Fitzgerald
The Coastal Star won 17 awards at an annual Florida Press Club dinner held in West Palm Beach on Jan. 31, reeling in five first-place awards, five second-place awards, six third-place awards and one honorable mention.
The first-place awards went to Jane Musgrave for business news, Larry Barszewski and Musgrave for breaking news, John Pacenti for public safety reporting, Faran Fagen for sports feature stories, and Sharon Geltner for her arts news entry.
The newspaper also received second- and third-place awards in the prestigious Lucy Morgan Award competition for in-depth reporting. The second-place award was for its coverage of the Brightline train collision with a Delray Beach fire truck and related stories. The third-place award was for a package of stories about safety on State Road A1A, including ones about a pedestrian struck and killed in Delray Beach and a cyclist killed in Boca Raton.
The paper’s other second-place awards came in general news photography, business news, health writing and light features. The other third-place awards were in art news, commentary, environmental writing, minority news and public safety reporting. The honorable mention was for environmental writing.
“I'm very proud of the work you all did,” Editor Larry Barszewski wrote in an email to the staff. “I'm especially glad a number of you were able to be there and be recognized by your peers for your outstanding work.”
Musgrave won a first-place award for business stories she wrote that detailed the travails of a beleaguered owner of a decrepit house in Ocean Ridge once owned by an ex-wife of former automobile executive John DeLorean (February 2025), another about Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison purchasing the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa (September 2024), and a third — Buy and Bulldoze — about how millionaires and billionaires now think nothing of buying multimillion-dollar homes only to raze them to build even bigger and better (April 2025).
She and Barszewski received a first-place award for their story about a double murder at 365 Ocean, a boutique extended stay hotel on A1A in Boca Raton (October 2024).
Pacenti’s first place award came for a trio of stories, which included an article about five drownings due to rip currents off the coast of Palm Beach County (November 2024); angry beachgoers in Ocean Ridge fed up with pooches pooping on the beach (April 2025); and Delray Beach trying to decide what to do with money it received from a national opioid settlement (July 2024).
Fagen’s first-place award was based on a story he wrote about children with special needs playing baseball in the Miracle League of Palm Beach County (January 2025), and one about a junior national champion squash player at St. Andrew’s High School from Delray Beach (May 2025).
Sharon Geltner earned her first-place prize for her article about the Palm Beach County arts community being shocked when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed 100% of the state’s arts grants (July 2024).
The awards ceremony marked the 76th anniversary of the Florida Press Club’s founding. The competition covered the period from June 1, 2024 through May 31, 2025.
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