KDS Travel Writer Wins Top Newswriting Award in Outdoor Journalists’ Program
October 20, 2026, 7:47 a.m.

Cypress trees line the normally placid Guadalupe River, the stream that turned violent and deadly in a flash flood in 2025 that was the subject to Adkinson's award-winning reporting. Image by Tom Adkinson

KNOXVILLE - Knoxville Daily Sun travel writer Tom Adkinson won first place in the newswriting category of the Tennessee Outdoor Writers Association “Excellence in Craft” awards program for 2026. He also won second place honors in the features category.

His newswriting award was for “The Calm Before the Storm,” an article about the Guadalupe River and the July 2025 Texas Hill Country flash flood that killed at least 139 people.

Adkinson contrasted the rage of the flash flood with the serenity he experienced fishing in the river earlier that year. The article appeared in East-West News Service, an online news outlet focused on travel, culture and history.

His feature writing award was for a Knoxville Daily Sun travel article headlined “Gator Bites, Frog Legs, and Airboat Rides.”

That piece was about the Lone Cabbage Fish Camp, a restaurant/beer joint/airboat business that epitomizes what’s known as “Old Florida.” The fish camp is between Orlando and Cape Canaveral, a rural region that has neither theme parks nor rocket launches.

Adkinson began writing for The Knoxville Daily Sun in 2017. His travel articles appear every Friday. He has filed stories from throughout the U.S. and from Barbados, Canada, China, Colombia, Germany, Grenada, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Spain and Türkiye.

Ducks Unlimited, the international waterfowl conservation organization headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., sponsors the Tennessee Outdoor Writers Association’s Excellence in Craft competition.

“Outdoor journalism plays an important role in entertaining and educating the public about outdoor sports, conservation, land use and related topics. We are pleased to salute outdoor writers, photographers and broadcasters every year,” said Tony Dolle, executive director of the Tennessee Outdoor Writers Association.