Columbia, Upstate papers win top national honors in Atlanta.

The Columbia Regional Business Report and GSA Business Report won top honors for journalism excellence during an annual conference of business-to-business publishers over the weekend in Atlanta.

Hundreds of publishers attended the three-day summer conference and awards ceremony for the Alliance of Area Business Publishers, which is headquartered in Norwalk, Conn. The awards were judged by faculty members of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Melinda Waldrop, editor of the Columbia Regional Business Report, received a gold award for bylined commentary for an essay on the shootings deaths of five newspaper staffers at The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., on June 28, 2018.

Ross Norton, editor of GSA Business Report, took a silver award for best body of work by a single journalist for a selection of stories he wrote throughout 2018.

Judges noted Waldrop's "heartfelt column" that balanced commentary with a deep sense of connection to the individuals at The Capital Gazette in Waldrop's opinion piece.

"The emotion in her work is intense but never takes over her clear and expressive writing," judges said in awarding Waldrop the top honor. "Her work reveals insights into tight-knit communities of journalists and highlights the new challenges and dangers of the current news landscapes that require grappling with such tragedy."

Group Publisher Grady Johnson said Waldrop's column demonstrated something that tends to get lost in recent commentary about the media: that journalists ask tough questions in pursuit of the truth.

"Certainly, the framers of the Constitution weren't afraid of this pursuit when they made freedom of the press part of that historic document," Johnson said. "That...