The Journal Gazette recently won six awards, including two first-place awards, from the Inland Press Association.

The awards were presented Oct. 28-30 during the association’s 127th annual meeting in Chicago. The Journal Gazette competed against newspapers with circulations of more than 75,000.

Newspaper staffers who received awards were:

•Staff – Community Leadership Award, for a June 21 special section titled “Second Chances.” It featured stories about a doctor with one arm, a wildlife rehabilitation center, a cancer survivor and two friends who saved a life. “Few gave as much hope to a city as this wonderful series,” judges wrote.

•Staff – first place, picture use, “Missing girl dead; baby sitter jailed,” a Dec. 27, 2011, front page that included a photo of a candlelight vigil for a 9-year-old girl whose remains were found after she had been missing several days.

•Sherry Slater – third place, explanatory reporting, for “The surreal day the bank failed,” an October 2011 story about the failure of an Evansville bank.

•Archie Ingersoll – third place, personality profile, for “Blackjack, love and a motorcycle.” This November 2011 four-part series was about a long-distance Internet romance that ended with a tragic motorcycle crash.

•Staff – third place, picture use, “Fury, in the heat of frustration,” for a July 6 front page that included a photo of a man with an ax dealing with the aftermath of last summer’s damaging winds.

•Staff – third place, best online innovation, for developing an online database accessible from the newspaper’s website, www.journalgazette.net, for the posting of public records data. The data include crime maps, ISTEP+ results, salary information for public employees and other records.

The Inland Press Association includes more than 870 newspapers from all 50 states, Canada and Bermuda.