PORT ANGELES — Jasmine Birkland has been selected as the Peninsula Daily News/Sequim This Week Employee of the Year for 2009.
Birkland, the Circulation Department’s customer service manager, was picked in a unanimous vote by the PDN’s department heads.
She received the award at the newspaper’s annual holiday party for its employees in Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend.
Peninsula Daily News is one of the largest employers in Jefferson and Clallam counties, with 104 full-time and part-time employees.
It also publishes Sequim This Week, a free weekly newspaper delivered by mail to readers in the Sequim ZIP code.
“When I think of Jasmine, I think of dedication, determination, attention to the our newspapers’ needs and attention to its subscribers,” said John Brewer, PDN publisher and editor.
“And she has a wonderful optimism that fuels her energy, enthusiasm and achievements.”
Other award winners:
Carrier of the Year — “honoring the best of those individuals who brave wind, rain, ice, sleet, snow, loose dogs, roaming elk and bear to get our subscribers a dry and on-time newspaper Sunday through Friday” — Jamie Robinson, who delivers routes in Port Angeles.
“Since Jamie became a carrier just over a year ago she has never missed a day . . . she has thrown just under 41,000 papers in the last year with the fewest [misdelivery] complaints of any carrier in the Port Angeles district,” said Birkland.
Advertising Ace of the Year — Diane McCrimmon, PDN advertising representative in the Port Angeles office.
She was lauded by Advertising Director Suzanne Williams for increasing sales in her territory and for “marketing campaigns that captivate advertisers by using all of our online and print advertising venues and making sure that every element of the campaign works.”
News Staffer of the Year — Matt Schubert, sports writer and outdoors columnist.
A winner of this award in 2006, Schubert was “selected again for going above and beyond the call of duty even more — namely shepherding three times a year an exhaustive effort of photos, head shots and data compilation into special sections to recognize the North Olympic Peninsula’s stand-out athletes,” said Executive Editor Rex Wilson.
New Staffer of the Year, honoring an outstanding new employee — Michael Price of the PDN’s Web/Internet Services.
Said Ann Ashley, PDN director of newspaper services:
“He creates Web ads and Web designs with ease . . . and [helps] anyone at any time with understanding the Web site or researching statistics.”
Edward Barton Webster Spirit Award — Three employees in the Port Angeles office received this award: Tom McKinney, pre-press; Denise Webb, front desk receptionist and business office staffer; and Linda Haller, accounts payable supervisor.
“This year’s recipients of the Spirit award have without question the kind of dedication to the PDN and Sequim This Week that one would expect for such an honor,” said Brewer.
“All three embody and dignify the spirit of E.B. Webster.”
The Spirit award is named after the man who founded the Port Angeles Evening News — predecessor to today’s PDN — on April 10, 1916.
The author of four books, businessman, well-known naturalist, editor and publisher, Webster relished people, and it was said that the twinkle in his eye could be seen in the words he set in print.
An ardent early-day environmentalist and supporter of the North Olympic Peninsula, his writings were instrumental in influencing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish Olympic National Park.
When Webster died in 1936, William Welsh, managing editor of the Evening News, wrote that “the community mourns a man who left it far better than he found it.”
