The Gilroy Dispatch won General Excellence for papers with circulation less than 10,000 from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for the third time in as many years. The paper received the prize at the Better California Newspapers luncheon Saturday in the Grand Ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco in front of about 400 newspaper representatives from across the state.

"It's unprecedented," publisher Steve Staloch said. "The Dispatch has been honored three years in a row with the highest honor bestowed among their peers, and it just reaffirms what we do each day: provide quality community journalism."

Dispatch entries were among 4,400 entries submitted in 27 categories by weekly and daily papers statewide in nine divisions based on circulation. The stories, photographs, editorials and page designs earned an additional 10 first- or second-place prizes for the paper. The 11 total awards - which were presented near the culmination of the awards luncheon - was tops for similarly sized papers and fourth-highest for all papers in the state. Only the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times and the weekly Half Moon Bay Review won more awards.

"It's such an affirmation for what happens here every day in terms of how hard the staff works, in terms of how important they consider community journalism to be," Executive Editor Mark Derry said. "Because we're a feisty little newspaper, we have skirmishes with the powers that be in Gilroy. But the important thing is we care about service. And that includes being feisty."

In the end, the awards are an outgrowth of trying to engage readers with significant, meaningful stories, Derry said.

Staff writers and editors nabbed first place honors for editorial comment about the lack of public outrage at the Velladao Mobile Home Park's squalid conditions, a sports story on the lethal dangers of boxing against steroid users and lifestyles coverage of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake 100-year anniversary.

Staff also took home second-place awards for Emily Alpert's business story on the changing face of tattooing, Kelly Savio's arts and entertainment coverage of the controversial mania surrounding The Da Vinci Code book and movie, and editorial pages on the need for the city to help schools dig out of a burgeoning construction deficit.

Photographers swept two key categories, winning both first and second places in the sports photo and photo essay categories.

"It's nice to be recognized," chief photographer Chris Riley said. "It validates our work that we're doing the right thing that we continuously win awards every year."

Staff photographer Lora Schraft's first-place sports photo captures the Gilroy High School field hockey goalie collapsed on the ground, lamenting a 1-0 loss in the Central Coast Section quaterfinals. Bill Strange, who is also the official Gilroy Garlic Festival photographer, spent months assembling the first-place photo essay, which chronicles the daily life of residents at the Buddhist monastery on top of Mount Madonna.

Riley won first place for a sports photo and second place for a photo essay published in the Dispatch's sister paper, the Morgan Hill Times. The Times won a total of seven awards in the weekly newspaper division and the Dispatch's other sister paper, the Hollister Free Lance, claimed six awards.