Contest Finalists for 2012

By Mike Deupree
NSNC Contest Chair

The annual writing contest of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists is over. The judges have labored long and hard. The decisions have been made. And the winners are …

Going to be announced in about a month.

The suspense won’t end until the awards banquet Saturday, May 5, at the NSNC conference in Macon, Ga. But we can tease a little bit.

First, to warm us up, the judges found entries deserving of “Honorable Mention” in three categories.

• In General Interest (print) over 50,000 circulation, those honors went to Mike Kelly, The Record, Bergen County, N.J., and Jim Schutze, Dallas Observer.
• In General Interest (print) under 50,000 circulation, honorable mention went to Walt Brasch, Shamokin (Pa.) News-Item, and Mary Phelan, The Howard County (Md.) Times.
• In Online, Blog and Multimedia columns with over 100,000 monthly unique visitors. The HM nod goes to Mary C. Curtis, Washington Post contributor, and Russell Frank, StateCollege.com.

Our congratulations to those writers for a job well done. They will be presented their certificates at the banquet. If they cannot attend, the documents will be mailed.

Which brings us to the finalists, the men and women who will take home handsome plaques for first, second and third place. The finalists, in alphabetical order by category:

• General Interest (print) over 50,000 circulation: Gendy Alimurung, LA Weekly; Derrick Z. Jackson, The Boston Globe; Dave Lieber, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
• Humor (print) over 50,000 circulation: Samantha Bennett, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Kathy Eliscu, Maine Women, Portland; Alice Laussade, Dallas Observer.
• General Interest (print) under 50,000 circulation: Saralee Perel, Cape Cod (Mass.) Times; Eve Samples, The Stuart (Fla) News; Ken Tingley, The Post-Star, Glens Falls, N.Y.
• Humor (print) under 50,000 circulation: Saralee Perel, Cape Cod (Mass.) Times; Laura Rafaty, Napa Valley (Calif.) Register; Jerry Zezima, Stamford (Conn.) Advocate.
• Online, Blog and Multimedia over 100,000 monthly unique visitors: John Avlon, The Daily Beast; Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times; Roger Simon, Politico.
• Online, Blog and Multimedia under 100,000 monthly unique visitors: Ivy Eisenberg, Schmeightschmatchers; Mike Farley, Farley in Writing; Amy White, Waiting for Merlot.

The finalists are encouraged to accept their plaques in person at the awards banquet Saturday, May 5, at the 36th annual NSNC conference, this year in Macon.