of 33,000 on its non-delivery days. Sean Kirst is a featured news columnist and Bud Poliquin is a featured sports columnist. Kirst was the winner of the 2008 Ernie Pyle Journalism Award for human interest writing, given by the Scripps Howard Foundation to the newspaper writer nationwide who most exemplifies the works of Pyle, a famed World War II correspondent. Editorial board Marie Morelli is Editorial Opinions Leader. Others on the editorial board include Chairman Stephen A. Rogers, President Tim Kennedy, and Director of Special Projects Stan Linhorst. The board meets regularly and often hosts newsmakers or community groups. Awards The Post-Standard was named among the "10 best newspapers in America with a circulation of under 100,000" by Al Neuharth of USA Today. In June 2015, the New York State Associated Press Association awarded The Post-Standard its Newspaper of Distinction award. The newspaper won the award five years in a row from 2005 through 2009. In July 2015, the New York News Publishers Association gave eight first-place awards to The Post-Standard, the most of any newspaper in its circulation category. The Scarborough market research company ranks Syracuse.com as the No. 1 newspaper website in the nation in terms of market penetration. Scarborough ranks The Post-Standard Sunday newspaper No. 3 in the U.S. The Pew Research Center's 2012 Project for Excellence in Journalism ranked The Post-Standard's 2011 market penetration ("the number of papers sold as a percentage of households in a given market") as 64%, or the fourth best in the country. Investigations In the late 1970s, The Post-Standard became more aggressive in its investigative coverage. In the 2000s, the paper published in-depth investigative pieces focusing especially on the inner workings of Albany, including Gov. George Pataki's office and the New York Legislature. Other investigations have focused on the allocation of state-borrowed money by the leaders of the State Senate and Assembly; and on controversy over the secretive sale of public lands along the Erie Canal by the New York State Canal Corporation for less than the land's market value. In mid-2014, the newspaper began publishing stories from reporter John O’Brien, who uncovered serious allegations about the 1994 disappearance of Heidi Allen. The reporting raised doubts about whether the wrong person was imprisoned for her presumed killing. In dozens of stories since, O’Brien exposed flaws in the investigation and prosecution. In 2014, Douglass Dowty won a state Associated Press first-place award