PORT TOWNSEND — Elliot Pflueger won first place in the League of Women Voters of Jefferson County’s essay contest with his essay “Damning Darkness in Isolation.”
The six-member judging panel awarded second place to “The World Would be Dark Without News” by Tessa Richardson and third place went to Keanu Morrison for “The Nature of News.”
First prize was $150, second prize was $100 and third place took $75.
All three winners are students at Chimacum High School.
The topic for this year’s contest, the league’s first in more than a decade, was “What would your community be like without the news?”
The topic was inspired by a recent study by the League of Women Voters of Washington titled, “The Decline of Local News and Its Impact on Democracy.”
The study noted that between 2005 and 2020 more than one fourth of the newspapers in the country closed which left more than 1,800 communities without a local newspaper.
For more information, including the full text of the winning essays, visit www.lwvwa.org/Jefferson.
