Ray Mosby, editor of small Mississippi weekly the Deer Creek Pilot, wins state's top editorial award for third time

Ray Mosby holds his third such award.

UPDATE: Ray Mosby died Nov. 9, 2021. He was 70.

Ray Mosby, editor and publisher of the Deer Creek Pilot in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, won the J. Oliver Emmerich Award for Editorial Excellence from the Mississippi Press Association this month for the third time.

Mosby was honored for editorials in 2020 opposing the "defund the police" movement but calling for the de-militarization of police departments; the need for neighbors to cooperate and help each other in the Covid-19 pandemic; and endorsing a new state flag for Mississippi.

The contest judges wrote that his writing was "fearless . . . and fearless wins."

One of the winning editorials

The award was the latest big one for Mosby, who won MPA's Bill Minor Prize for Investigative Journalism in 2017 for revealing the need for renovations and repairs at the hospital owned by Issaquena and Sharkey counties, which his paper serves. He says they are the two poorest counties in the state, with a combined population of 6,500.

Mosby told Billy Watkins of the Jackson Clarion Ledger in 2017 that he came from the Clarksdale Press Register in 1994 and started offering a newsy front page and an editorial page with real opinion.

“Folks around here weren’t used to that and I was wondering if the paper was going to make it,” he recalled. Then a stranger whose arms “were bigger than my waist” came into his office and said, ‘There are a lot of folks out there who think you ain’t nothing but a son of a b----. But can’t a single one of them call you a liar.’” Mosby said that reassured him, and he kept on opining.

In other awards at the MPA convention in Biloxi, Jamie Patterson of The Yazoo Herald won the Bill Minor Prize for weeklies for the fourth time in 12 years, for stories centered on the Yazoo County jail; and the Minor prize for dailies was awarded to Isabelle Taft of the Sun Herald in Biloxi and the national journalistic philanthropy Report for America, for coverage of a murder case in Picayune and social-media rumors that persisted in its aftermath.

Among other awards, Jack Tannehill, retired editor and publisher of the Union Appeal, was placed in the MPA Hall of Fame, and Jack Ryan, publisher of the Enterprise-Journal in McComb, was elected MPA president for the coming year.