Community editor, group executive win Ky. award for public service through community journalism

Two rural newspaper journalists with very different but equally distinctive careers will receive the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism at a dinner in Richmond, Ky., on July 20.

The honorees are Jennifer P. Brown, left, opinion editor and former editor of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville, and Max Heath, below, retired vice president and executive editor of Landmark Community Newspapers Inc., based in Shelbyville, Ky., and a subsidiary of Landmark Media of Norfolk, Va.

 

The Al Smith Award, named for the rural newspaper publisher who was founding producer and host of Kentucky Educational Television’s “Comment on Kentucky,” is presented by the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. Smith is a national SPJ Fellow and co-founder of the Institute, based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky.