That same year Gary Meyer and Patric Hedlund won Editorial Comment Second Place for "Lebec County Water District needs serious leadership."
[citation needed] The newspaper won awards from the National Newspaper Association on July 10 for (1) a series of investigative reports on the starvation of horses in Lockwood Valley (second place), (2) reporting on the struggle by Pine Mountain Club residents to secure Kern County's first firefighter-paramedic program (third place), (3) Editorial Writing about the newspaper's public-service responsibility in "The Stinkin' Public and Our School District's Brain Drain," by Patric Hedlund (Honorable Mention), and (4) an environmental story headed "Secret Negotiation between Tejon Developers and 'Big Green' Groups Sprouts Deal" (third place).
The newspaper refused to cease its photography in the face of threats by McWhorter and board member Tony Venegas to "call the sheriff."
[9] A jury committee said a "lack of communication" was responsible for the controversy and blamed that circumstance on "the people of the area and their newspaper," adding that The Enterprise news articles "appear to be inaccurate and/or inadequately researched.
In an editorial, Meyer and Hedlund wrote that the jury made no attempt to contact them before issuing the report, which, they said, "attacks the citizens and the newspaper .
Seidner's preferred candidates lost the election and he claimed that The Mountain Enterprise had made untrue statements about him in the course of its reporting about the campaign issues.
Seidner also had claimed that the publisher and the editor of the newspaper (Gary Meyer and Patric Hedlund) had tampered with the ballot box in the election.
The Mountain Enterprise filed an Anti-SLAPP motion to strike with the court which required Seidner to demonstrate that his arguments had merit or risk paying the newspaper's attorney's fees.