At Ease earns top honors in Department of Defense competition

At Ease Express, the official publication of the Wisconsin National Guard, received a Thomas Jefferson Award Friday (May 14) as the best web-based publication in the U.S. military for 2009 during a Communicators of Excellence Awards ceremony at Fort Meade, Md.

Lt. Col. Jackie Guthrie, public affairs director for the Wisconsin National Guard, was joined by Brig. Gen. Don Dunbar, adjutant general of Wisconsin, in accepting the award.

"This is a tremendous honor for our public affairs team," Guthrie said. "Many people put in a great deal of time and effort for each issue of At Ease, and it is very rewarding for that combined effort to be recognized at this level. However, our readers remain the most important judges as to whether At Ease is succeeding in telling the story of the Wisconsin National Guard."

At Ease has won several Keith L. Ware awards in its more than four-decade history, but this marks the publication's first Department of Defense-level award. A newsprint publication for much of its tenure and a magazine-format periodical between 2002 and 2009, At Ease converted to a web-only publication in July 2009.

In December of last year, At Ease revised its format to become more interactive. Online readers could view more photos per page as well as open video files, and still had the option of reproducing pages on personal printers. Stories also included links to online archives that display complete versions of stories and additional photos.

"We're trying to bridge the gap between readership trends," explained 1st Sgt. Vaughn R. Larson, At Ease editor. "More and more readers are getting their news from the Internet, and yet we recognize that a significant percentage of our readers remain comfortable with a traditional news delivery format such as print. It can be a tricky balance, but it's an enjoyable challenge."

Achieving that balance is the goal of all military communicators, said Philip J. "PJ" Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, during a brief address to award winners.

"We can communicate one to one, one to many or many to many," Crowley said. "The successful communicator will be someone who makes information compelling, yet simple to understand and convenient for the reader, listener and viewer."

Crowley acknowledged the vast array of methods available to communicate messages, and said the challenge is to find the right medium and excel as storytellers.

"Our enemies have bomb factories and video-production units," he added. "They are competing for terrain between two mountains in Afghanistan and for the space between two ears. We were successful across the Iron Curtain, and we can be equally successful across the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan."