Reporter managing editor Bill Forry accepts an award for best feature writing from Frank Herron, director of UMass Boston's Center on Media and Society.

The Reporter Newspapers - including the Dorchester Reporter and Mattapan Reporter; won four New England Ethnic Media Awards, or NEENAs, during a ceremony held last Thursday, Nov. 20, at UMass-Boston. The first annual Ethnic Media Awards competition was sponsored by UMass-Boston's Center on Media and Society and the California-based New America Media. The winners will be entered into a national competition in Atlanta in 2009.

Reporter managing editor Bill Forry won the top prize in the NEENA's feature writing category for his May 2008 story about the Grove Hall radio station TOUCH 106.1 FM. Pete Stidman, the Reporter's news editor, was a finalist in the local news reporting category for his January 2008 story about a viral video that shed new light on gang violence in the Vietnamese community. Brian Concannon, Jr., a columnist for the Boston Haitian Reporter, was awarded a finalist prize for his commentary titled "Eating Dirt in Ireland and Haiti," which was also published in the Dorchester Reporter last year. The Boston Irish Reporter's columnist Susan Gedutis Lindsay was also honored for her arts and culture reporting. More on the NEENAs and the UMass-Boston Ethnic Newswire can be found online at ethnicnewz.org