Thursday, October 13, 2011

Texas pair win top prize for small-paper commentary from Southern newspaper publishers

UPDATE, April 22: James W. Rainey, publisher of the Opelika-Auburn News in Alabama, has been named editor and publisher of the Herald-Zeitung, replacing longtime Editor/Publisher Doug Toney. Rainey will begin his new role April 30. The papers are part of the Southern Newspapers chain.

The Southern Newspaper Publishers Association named winners of its Carmage Walls Commentary Prize competition this week at SNPA's News Industry Summit. The wards were announced by Lissa Walls Vahldiek, vice president and chief operating officer of Southern Newspapers Inc., Houston, and daughter of the late Benjamin Carmage Walls, for whom the awards are named.

The winners in the small-paper category, for those with circulation of less than 50,000, were Publisher Doug Toney and Managing Editor Autumn Phillips of the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, a 7,600-circulation Southern Newspapers daily. Their series of editorials and columns served as the catalyst for change in development standards in the in the Texas Hill Country city of 50,000, founded by German immigrants in 1845. The paper, which dates to 1852, has been gaining circulation. Click to read the five columns and editorials: #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5.

Second place in the category went to Scott Morris, executive editor of the TimesDaily of Florence, Ala., who wrote about an open-records case that the newspaper eventually won. Read it here. Honorable mentions went to Bob Davis of The Anniston Star in Alabama and Paco Nunez of The Tribune in Nassau, Bahamas. The winner in the large-paper category was Roger Chesley of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, with second going to John Railey of the Winston-Salem Journal and mentions to Tod Robberson of the Dallas Morning News and Mac Thrower of the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

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