The Renton Reporter has won eight awards – including five first places – in the 2009 Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Better Newspaper Contest.

Awards went to:

• Editor Dean A. Radford: Newswriter of the Year; first place, general-interest columns, and second place, news story (about a local victim of a popular scam).

• Reporter Emily Garland: First place, best environmental story (about families’ efforts to reduce their garbage), and first place, best health or medical story (about a cancer survivor).

• Sports reporter Adam McFadden: Second place, best feature page design, and third place, best sports feature (about Seahawks’ running back Justin Forsett).

• Renton Reporter: first place, Internet feature (online voting at rentonreporter.com for the Renton FilmFrenzy People’s Choice award.)

The roughly 80 members of the state association of non-daily newspapers submitted more than 2,800 entries for the 2009 contest.

The winners were announced Friday night.