The Maine Sunday Telegram was named weekend Newspaper of the Year on Saturday at the 2012 Maine Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest.

The staff of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram won 37 other awards, including 18 first-place honors, at the association’s fall conference in Freeport.

The Sun Journal of Lewiston won best daily newspaper honors. The award for best weekly newspapers went to the Mount Desert Islander of Bar Harbor for papers with a circulation of 4,000 or more, and the York County Coast Star of Kennebunk for smaller weekly papers.

A.M. Sheehan and Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, whose reporting for the Advertiser Democrat of Norway exposed substandard conditions in public housing, shared Journalist of the Year honors. Hongoltz-Hetling is now a reporter for the Morning Sentinel in Waterville.

Among the Press Herald/Telegram first-place awards, the staff won for categories ranging from photos and illustration to investigative journalism and features.

Top examples included first place for an investigative report, “Anatomy of a recall,” about the recall of ground beef sold at Hannaford stores in seven states last year, and first place for spot news for a story headlined “There was fire all around us” about the Amtrak Downeaster colliding with a trash truck.

Another first-place honor went to Kelley Bouchard for the story “I’ve lived long enough,” about an end-of-life-crusader who wanted to die. Meanwhile, Susan M. Cover and John Richardson won first place for analysis for a story about public workers collecting salaries and state retirement pensions at the same time.

The staff was recognized for first-place awards for sports section/weekend, sports section/daily and features section/weekend. The staff was also recognized for the special online project category.

Individual first-place awards went to Tim Greenway for feature photo and Gabe Souza for sports photo. Michael Fisher won for illustration and Nate Thompson won for front-page design.

Meanwhile, other first-place awards went to Greg Kesich for editorial page/daily; Sally Tyrrell and John Willhoite for feature section/daily; Gregory Rec for multimedia presentation; Willhoite for feature headline; Steve Solloway for sports columnist; and Tom Bell for business/economics story.

The papers won second-place honors for news photo, scenic photo, front-page design, editorial page/weekend, in-paper circulation promo, staff blogger, investigative report, local columnist, opinion columnist, environmental story, and education story.

The papers won eight third-place awards.

The Press Herald/Telegram is owned by MaineToday Media Inc., which also owns the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and other media outlets in Maine.

Staff Writer Jessica Hall can be contacted at 791-6316 or at:

jhall@mainetoday.com