Maine Sunday Telegram on Saturday won the general excellence award for weekend newspapers 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.

Among the 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 a story called “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 a salary and a state retirement pension 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; Greg Rec for multimedia presentation; John 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 8 third-place awards.

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