Page 45

Plan now to recognize first responders

Jim Pumarlo is a former editor of the Red Wing (Minn.) Republican Eagle. He writes, speaks, and provides training on community newsroom success strategies. He is the author of “Journalism Primer: A Guide to Community News Coverage,” “Votes and Quotes: A Guide to Outstanding Election Coverage” and “Bad News and Good Judgment: A Guide to Reporting on Sensitive Issues in Small-Town Newspapers.” He can be reached at www.pumarlo.com and welcomes comments and questions at jim@pumarlo.com.

Are you looking for a project that can energize your news staff, generate new advertising revenue and underscore the value of a local newspaper to potential new subscribers?

Mark Oct. 28: National First Responders Day.

Full disclosure on two fronts.

First, highlighting the accomplishments of first responders is not my original idea. I picked it up while presenting earlier this year at a Management Boot Camp sponsored by the Texas Center for Community Journalism.

Second, I am not a fan of most proclamations. They are a dime a dozen and largely an opportunity for some official – most often the mayor – to get his or her name and photo in the local newspaper. The local affiliate typically submits a press release from the parent state or national organization – verbatim – inserting its name in a half-dozen spots.

However, proclamations can be worthwhile and substantive with local content. Think of the past two years and the performance of first responders during the pandemic and social unrest in the course of everyday routines. This collective group of individuals from firefighters and police to paramedics and EMTs is worthy of recognition.

Best yet, this project can involve all aspects of your operations from newsroom to advertising to circulation. 

First step: Have a brainstorming session to explore and identify content. Go beyond your newsroom to include your entire newspaper family, which likely represents a cross-section of the town. Broaden the discussion by including key individuals in your community. 

Here’s one list of story ideas to jump-start the discussion:

  • What has been the experience of first-responders in the past couple of years in terms of the nature of calls? Have circumstances changed dramatically?
  • Has special training been implemented?
  • Are staff experiencing stress and other issues in physical, emotional, and mental health?
  • What is the impact on first responders’ family lives, and relationships with friends and co-workers? Who is their support circle?
  • Are there particular heartwarming stories to share?
  • What are some of their more challenging stories to share?
  • Communities across the country are reporting difficulties in hiring police officers. What is the local landscape for recruiting across the range of first responders?
  • Does your community rely on full-time or part-time first responders? For part-time responders, how do employers and employees manage the responsibilities?
  • Profile first responders and their families.

This is but one quick list. Think of stories specific to your community.

The project may be spread over a few editions or packaged in a special section. Either way, it’s an opportunity to generate advertising revenue beyond the normal channels.

The service of first responders should spark numerous avenues to salute their performance, especially if responders have been exemplary in specific responses. If your community has part-time responders, pay particular attention to their full-time employers and pitch the chance for them to recognize their employees.

Lastly, include the circulation department. New U.S. Postal Service regulations allow newspapers to increase their in-county sampling to 50 percent of their in-county subscriptions. Newspapers previously were limited to 10 percent. Take advantage and sample nonsubscribers with your special coverage. Showcase the contributions of first-responders in your local communities and underscore the value of your local newspaper.

To bring the salute full circle, why not stage a community event to honor first-responders? Several public and private organizations and companies will likely jump at the occasion to co-sponsor an event. You have plenty of time to design the tribute and pin down the logistics.

Even those newspapers stretched thin with resources often have some lull in the summer. This is the perfect time to plan and produce a special project that will likely introduce many new names and faces that are ordinarily not found in your newspaper. The initiative has the potential of being a win-win for your newspaper and your community.

Share:

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2022 Yankee Quill award

DOWNLOAD NOMINATION FORM

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2022 Yankee Quill award. The award is administered by the New England Society of News Editors Foundation, and it recognizes the efforts and dedication of those in New England who have had a broad influence for good in the field of journalism.

Recipients are inducted into the Academy of New England Journalists upon receiving the Yankee Quill award at a celebratory dinner (date and location to be announced this fall).

The 2021 honorees were:

  • Paul Bass, New Haven (CT) Independent
  • Tom Condon, Hartford (CT) Courant.
  • Melvin B. Miller, Bay State Banner, Boston, MA
  • Marianne Stanton, Inquirer and Mirror, Nantucket, MA
  • Terrence L. Williams, Keene (NH) Sentinel
  • William Monroe Trotter, Boston (MA) Guardian, (historical figure)

Selection for the award is not based on a single distinguished achievement. Rather, the Yankee Quill recognizes the effort and dedication of those in New England who have had a broad influence for good in the field of journalism. In other words, it is not based on a certain achievement in reporting, writing or editing or on the fact that someone runs a good newspaper or broadcast show or station. Instead, it honors a lifetime of contribution to the profession.

Nominations may range across the entire field of journalism — including daily and weekly newspapers, radio and television news coverage, and other forms of media that meet the tests of journalism.

Members of the Academy of New England Journalists, along with the representatives of several New England media associations, will select the persons to receive the Yankee Quill Award this year.

The link to the nomination form can be found by clicking here.

The deadline for nominations is Friday, October 7, 2022.

Nominations may be emailed to: L.Conway@nenpa.com or hard copies may be mailed to:

Yankee Quill
c/o NENPA
PO Box 2505
Woburn MA 01801

For further information contact:
George Geers, academy chair, gnews@empire.net, (603) 785-4811
or Linda Conway, academy clerk, l.conway@nenpa.com, (781) 281-7648

Share:

CherryRoad Media buying four MA newspapers Gannett planned to close

A fast-growing newspaper company is entering New England with its purchase of four local weekly papers in Massachusetts.

CherryRoad Media is buying The Landmark in Holden, the Leominster Champion, the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and The Grafton News from Gannett.

The sale, which a Gannett spokesperson said will close late next week, means the company’s plans to close The Landmark and print its final edition Sept. 15 have been scrapped.

“When we heard about the potential closure of The Landmark, The Grafton News, the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and the Leominster Champion, we reached out to Gannett to see if they could be saved,” CherryRoad Media CEO and founder Jeremy Gulban said. “The bond between these newspapers and the numerous communities they serve is strong. We are excited to engage with Gannett to enable the continued operations of these newspapers as part of CherryRoad’s growing family of community newspapers.”

CherryRoad Media will own 71 newspapers in 12 states with this purchase and that of three Michigan weeklies recently.

CherryRoad Technologies, the parent company of CherryRoad Media, offers technology solutions such as cloud hosting and other network systems, was started by Gulban’s father in 1983. Jeremy Gulban reportedly took over operations in 2008, and they entered the news industry in 2020.

Compiled from reports in Telegram & Gazette and Mediapost

Share:

Community Journalism Lecture Series

The University of Vermont Center for Community News has developed a free Community Journalism Brown Bag Lecture Series featuring virtual national conversations around community news and the sustainability of local news with leading researchers, stakeholders, and teachers once a month beginning September 16.

The Center is also conducting a national survey of colleges and universities that are collaborating with local media outlets. If you are involved in a local media collaboration they are looking for your participation in the survey. The results will be released in the December lecture. Please fill out the survey here.

Register here for the Community Journalism Brown Bag Series and they will send you a link. The Brown bags are all at noon, on Sept 16, Oct 21, Nov. 18, and Thursday, Dec. 15.  If only interested in one, let them know. The full list is here https://www.uvm.edu/ccn/events.

SEPT 16: HOW TO SUSTAIN LOCAL NEWS? (Noon)
What are some of the innovative for-profit and public funding models? Moderated by Erica Beshears Perel, Director, Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Here we explore some private and public funding approaches. Mike Rispoli is the Senior Director of Journalism Policy at the Free Press/Free Press Action Fund recently helped win $3 million in public funding for news outlets in New Jersey and Michael Shapiro, the founder of TAPinto, a for-profit franchise model for local news, that presently has a network of 86 local news sites in New Jersey (as well as sites in PA, Fl, and NY). 

OCT 21: WHAT IS COMMUNITY JOURNALISM? (Noon)
A conversation with Andrea Wentzel, the author of “Community Centered Journalism” and Nikki Usher, the author of “News for the Rich, White and Blue.” A discussion of what we mean by community journalism, who it is for, and who is involved in the production and dissemination of news. This conversation is moderated by Traci Griffith, professor emeritus of Media Studies at St. Micheal’s College and the current racial justice director for ACLU Massachusetts. 

NOV 18: FUNDING FOR LOCAL NEWS? (Noon)
A lack of local news undercuts democracy, reduces citizen engagement, and leads to greater polarization. One recent report finds we are losing two community newspapers a week. What is the role of philanthropy in addressing the crisis? What is the role of public funding? Moderated by Meg Little Reilly, the Communications Director at the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution. In this panel, we hear from Duc Luu, the Director of Sustainability Initiatives/Journalism at the Knight Foundation, Todd Franko, the director of local sustainability and development for Report for America, and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Az) the champion of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (invited). 

DEC. 15: WHAT ARE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES DOING?
Lara Salahi, of Endicott College, and Christina Smith, of Georgia College, conduct research on these collaborations. Salahi, an award-winning journalist, started a partnership at Endicott College and Smith worked for 13 years as a community newspaper reporter and is now a weekly newspaper scholar. Also joining Salahi and Smith is Teri Finneman, from the University of Kansas and founder of the Eudora Times partnership, who has written about them with two co-researchers, and Mark Berkey-Gerard, from Rowan University, who has identified more than a hundred news-academic collaborations partnerships in the U.S. and conducted surveys and interviews on key benefits and challenges. CCN Director Richard Watts will moderate. 

The lecture series is sponsored by the Community Journalism Interest Group of AEJMC and the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont.

Share:

Boston Globe Editor Brian McGrory to Lead BU Journalism Department

Boston Globe Editor Brian McGrory at 2022 NENPA Convention.
Boston Globe Editor Brian McGrory at 2022 NENPA Convention.

Boston University’s journalism department is getting a new chair. Brian McGrory, editor of the Boston Globe for the last 10 years, and before that, a distinguished reporter and columnist, will step down from the post by the end of the year to helm the College of Communication journalism program.

McGrory, who will start at BU by the end of the calendar year, tells BU Today he plans to build upon a strong foundation in the journalism department, where he sees room for “a fresh perspective.” He’ll help create curricula that “reflect what newsrooms are looking for right now,” he says. That includes journalists with excellent storytelling skills and who are “fast on their feet, with fundamentally good judgment.” But beyond writing, he says, top-notch journalistic enterprises also need people who focus on audio, video, audience engagement, and data analysis.

“Boston is a media capital in this country,” McGrory says. “I think that BU can take even greater advantage of that. The department is a great place, and the faculty are strong and getting stronger.”

Read the full story on BU today

Share:

Radically Rural Offering Free Online Attendance For New England Journalists

Discounts are available to attend Radically Rural’s Community Journalism program. This year’s programming focuses on the challenges journalists face covering splintered communities and the issues that divide us.

The event will be staged in person in Keene, N.H., and online on Sept. 21 and 22.

If you sign up, use the word NENPA in the access code field, and save $20 off either in-person or online attendance. There is also a limited number of free tickets to attend online available to New England journalists through a Knight Foundation sponsorship.

Those interested should contact Terry Williams, President & COO, of The Keene Sentinel at twilliams@keenesentinel.com.

Registration is open up to and throughout the event.

Go to www.radicallyrural.org for more information.


COMMUNITY JOURNALISM PROGRAM

Sept. 21 I 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Covering the Divide: An exploration of how news organizations can better serve communities that are split over politics, the pandemic, guns, policing, voting and more.
Moderator – Elizabeth Stephens is the executive editor for the Columbia Missourian and the community newspaper chair at the Missouri School of Journalism. She is an associate professor and has led audience engagement and digital efforts at the Missourian. In her role as digital director at KOMU, she oversaw digital strategy and trained digital producers. Previously, she worked as an editor at SNL Financial in Charlottesville, Va., and copy desk chief at the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer. She holds both a master’s and bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri.
Panelists – Tony Baranowski, manager, special projects, Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowa; Sara Konrad Baranowski, deputy managing editor at the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowa; and Peter Huoppi, director, multimedia, The Day, New London, CT, and co-producer of the documentary, “Those People.”

Sept. 21 I 3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Better Judgment: How innovative newsrooms are changing their coverage of cops, courts, climate and other intersections of justice to provide fairer, more equitable news reporting.
Moderator – Cierra Hinton, publisher, Scalawag. Hinton has an undying love and passion for the complicated South, which she brings to Scalawag where she oversees operations and planning. According to its mission, through journalism and storytelling, Scalawag works in solidarity with oppressed communities in the South to disrupt and shift the narratives that keep power and wealth in the hands of the few.
Panelists – Paul Cuno-Booth, freelance journalist and reporter on several alternative justice projects in New Hampshire. Molly Born, West Virginia multimedia producer and educator, now documenting West Virginia’s history and future. DaLyah Jones, freelance journalist and former Director of Engagement and investigative reporter at the Texas Observer.

Sept. 22 I 2:00 p.m.  – 3:30 p.m.
Crazy Good – 50 ideas to make you a better journalist
Jeremy Caplan, director of teaching and learning at City University of New York Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Caplan teaches classes, workshops and webinars on entrepreneurial and digital journalism. He is a former Ford Fellow in Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Poynter Institute, a Wiegers Fellow at Columbia Business School, where he earned his MBA, and Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Journalism School, where he earned a master’s degree in journalism.

Share:

July Obituaries 2022

CONNECTICUT
Robert Fink
Joan James
Ronald Organek
James Senich
Scudder Smith
William Williams
MASSACHUSETTS
Malabar Brewster
Cathleen Conley
Christopher Lawson
Doris Louden
Robin McGuirk
Maureen Nelson
Alice O’Leary
Kenneth Progin
Elaine Schuster
Ann Shaw
Melissa Varnavas
Walter Zglobicki
MAINE
Timothy Allen
Elizabeth Worrey
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Alice Wood
RHODE ISLAND
None Reported
VERMONT
None Reported
Share:

MacGregor Fiske Award being Incorporated Into Journalism Education Foundation of New England Scholarships

The MacGregor Fiske Award was first bestowed in 2013 and has awarded up to $2,000 annually to a journalist in New England with less than five years of experience who had been recommended by their editor and then selected by a panel of former editors and reporters.

In 2020, a number of smaller awards were also made to journalists who had been laid off or furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mac Fiske, who died in 2009 at 75, had spent his career as a sportswriter, sports editor, news editor, city editor, copy editor, and weekly columnist. Fiske was a much-loved mentor known for his warmth, kindness, and keen editing.

He began his career at the Framingham (Mass.) News, which became the Middlesex News and is now the MetroWest Daily News. He worked for many years at the Providence Journal-Bulletin, up to his retirement when he returned to the MetroWest Daily News as a part-time copy editor and also followed his passion for the sea on his 22-foot Columbia sailboat.

A fourth-generation newspaperman, he earlier enjoyed a period as a merchant mariner with the Boston Harbor Pilots and served in the Army during the Korean War.

The MacGregor Fiske Award was established by Mac’s wife, Mary McCann Fiske, who also grew up in a newspaper family in Framingham. She started the award to recognize talented, hard-working journalists who are relatively new to the field, encouraging them to persevere in the profession. The award also honors the contributions of journalists in sustaining an informed society.

Past awardees have included reporters at the Lowell Sun, Cambridge Chronicle/Tab, and Patriot Ledger, a reporter and a photographer at the Portland Press Herald, a feature layout editor at the Fall River Herald News, and a night editor at the Valley News.

McCann Fiske has decided to transfer the funding to NENPA’s Journalism Education Foundation to ensure its continued impact and reach in the years to come through scholarships to promising journalism students.

“Mac never sought the limelight, but he would have felt good about helping individual journalists and seeing the progress of those the Fiske Award has recognized,” McCann Fiske said. “I’m hopeful that this will continue to help strengthen journalism in New England, especially newspapers, which we know can mean so much to a community.”

MacGregor Fiske

Please contact Linda Conway at l.conway@nenpa.com if you would like to make a donation to support the MacGregor Fiske Scholarship, the general Journalism Education Foundation of New England scholarships, or if you are interested in honoring a mentor or a loved one with a Journalism scholarship in their name.

Share:

Nominations close Monday for the inaugural class of E&P’s Creative Visionaries

Nominations for the 2022 inaugural class of “E&P’s Creative Visionaries,” their salute to creative directors, graphic artists, and multimedia designers, close on Monday, August 29.

Help Editor & Publisher salute these essential colleagues who bring our storytelling to life, curating captivating images, informative graphics, copy, and increasingly, video and audio. Their talents for communicating the news in visually intriguing but effective ways are integral to a news organization’s success today.

We mustn’t overlook the talented professionals who work outside of the newsroom, who artfully create advertisements and sponsored content for multiplatform distribution.

Nominations for colleagues who have been instrumental in the news organization’s creative vision, who are accomplished designers, and who exhibit a pattern of leadership and innovation.

They deserve our gratitude and E&P’s tribute with the winners being featured in the October 2022 edition of E&P Magazine.

Nominations close at midnight (EDT) on Monday, August 29, 2022.

Learn more and nominate someone

Share:

Stigler Center’s Journalists in Residence Program Open For Applications

With the aim of shaping the next generation of leaders in business reporting, the Stigler Center’s Journalists in Residence Program launched in 2017. The program provides a transformative learning experience for journalists working in all forms of media around the world.

Participants spend approximately 12 weeks on our Hyde Park campus, auditing classes, participating in Stigler Center events, collaborating with peers, and networking with the university’s scholars.

The program offers exclusive seminars, opportunities to study with world-class faculty, and the chance to network with colleagues from around the world.

The deadline to apply is October 2, 11:59 pm CT Chicago time.

Applicants will be notified of the final decisions in December.

The Spring 2023 program will run from approximately March 13 – June 3, 2023.

Journalists with some years of media experience, proficient English, and an interest in deepening their knowledge and understanding of political economy are encouraged to apply

Learn more and apply

Share:
1...444546...173Page 45 of 173
© 2025 New England Newspaper & Press Association. All rights reserved.