Uvalde weekly's editor-publisher wins Texas Press Assn. award for community leadership, the latest in a long line

Craig Garnett (Oklahoma Press Association photo)

Craig Garnett, editor and publisher of the Uvalde Leader-News, received the Texas Press Association's Frank W. Mayborn Award for Community Leadership at the group's recent convention. He was cited for the twice-weekly's coverage of the school shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead, and its aftermath, the Texas Press Messenger reports. Incoming TPA President Ken Esten Cooke writes, "The entire staff . . . showed bravery and tenacity through a horrible community tragedy."

"On May 24, 2022, we got an assignment we never expected and we never wanted," Garnett told his colleagues. He told college students in an Dow Jones News Fund editing program at the University of Texas, "If we hadn't been a family, we wouldn't have survived the past year."

Garnett earned an economics degree from Southern Methodist University in 1975, joined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1977 and moved to the Kansas City Star in 1978. He became general manager of the Leader-News in 1982 and owner and publisher in 1989.

"Garnett and the newspaper have won countless regional and state press awards," the Messenger reports. "The Leader-News took home sweepstakes honors in the 2022 Texas Better Newspaper Contest." Its latest award was for Best Editorial in the National Newspaper Association contest.