By Henry Fitzgerald
Fresh off a 17-award performance in the Florida Press Club’s annual competition, The Coastal Star has been named a 15-time finalist in the upcoming Florida Press Association awards.
The groups have different purposes — the FPA serves newspaper organizations and the FPC individual journalists — but both competitions recognize good journalism being done in the state.
The FPC presented its awards at a January ceremony in West Palm Beach, with The Coastal Star reeling in five first-place, five second-place and six third-place awards and an honorable mention. The competition covered the period from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025.
The FPA award winners for the 2025 calendar year will be presented this summer. The finalists were announced March 27. Besides reporting and photography nominations, The Coastal Star is a division finalist for the general excellence award — a prize it won last year for its 2024 coverage.
In the recent FPC competition, The Coastal Star’s 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 category for in-depth reporting: for coverage of the Brightline train collision with a Delray Beach fire truck and for stories about safety on State Road A1A.
“I’m very proud of the work you all did,” Barszewski, the paper’s editor, wrote 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’s first-place business award was for a story about Larry Ellison purchasing the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa and one on wealthy buyers who think nothing of razing multimillion-dollar homes to build even bigger and better.
She and Barszewski won first place covering a double murder at 365 Ocean, a boutique hotel on A1A in Boca Raton.
Pacenti’s first-place award included coverage of five drownings due to rip currents off the coast of Palm Beach County and angry beachgoers in Ocean Ridge fed up with pooches pooping on the beach.
Fagen won first place for a story about children with special needs playing baseball in the Miracle League of Palm Beach County and one about a champion squash player at Saint Andrew’s High School.
Geltner earned first-place honors for her story about the Palm Beach County arts community after Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed 100% of the state’s arts grants.
Larry Barszewski contributed to this report.
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