Dick Connor (Photo Credit: Denver Post)
The PFWA’s Dick Connor Writing Awards encompass beat reporting, columns, features, enterprise news/features, breaking news, and game stories by PFWA members.
The yearly award period begins after the Super Bowl and continues through the following year’s Super Bowl.
The awards are named for Connor, who worked for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. He was the ninth PFWA president (1980-81) and the organization’s 1991 Bill Nunn Jr. Award recipient. A long-time PFWA officer, Connor also served as secretary-treasurer, and later, the organization’s vice-president.
Connor started his career at the News in 1961 and moved to the Post in 1965. He went back to the News in 1982, but returned to the Post in 1988, where he worked until his death in 1992. He was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in 1992 and was a 22-time Colorado Sports Writer of the Year honoree, including 18 consecutive years at one point. Connor was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1993.
The PFWA first instituted writing awards in 1973, and the awards were named for Connor after his death in 1992.
Connor Writing Awards: 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s
Beginning in 2019, the Connor Award categories were named for some of the renowned pro football writers who chronicled the NFL over the league’s first 100 seasons: the Bob Oates Beat Reporting Award, named in honor of the Los Angeles Times reporter and the PFWA’s 1974 Bill Nunn Jr. Award winner, the Dave Anderson Column Writing Award, named after the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and the 1998 Nunn Award honoree, the Bryan Burwell Feature Writing Award, named in honor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and New York Daily News writer and columnist, the Lesley Visser Enterprise News/Features Award, named after the pioneering football writer who became the NFL’s first female beat reporter in 1976 at the Boston Globe and who later worked for CBS, the Will McDonough Breaking News Award, named after the Boston Globe reporter and columnist who went on to a decorated career in TV journalism and who received the Nunn Award in 1990 and the Dave Goldberg Game Story Award, named after the 41-year Associated Press reporter and 2015 Nunn Award honoree.