Curtis Honeycutt
You may remember that National Columnists Day is also when we ask you to join us in celebration with a selfie and the hashtag #IAmAColumnist. You can take a look at last year HERE.
We want you to join the fun again! Plus there’s more! If you want to go beyond the selfie and pen a column or blog (check out Chandra Bozelko’s column) about why you write opinion and why you think opinion sections are important to publications please be sure we see it! Tag us @NSNCGroup on Twitter and use the hashtag #IAmAColumnist or send the link to Bonnie via email, Media@Columnists.com. We will retweet and share all selfies and related columns and blogs.
Use one of the templates below for your selfie or make your own!
Blank Template
“I am a Blogger. I am a modern Columnist.” Template
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Background on Ernie Pyle
Photo courtesy Ernie Pyle Legacy Foundation
Ernie Pyle was a World War II war correspondent, and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists considers him our patron saint. National Columnists Day, April 18, commemorates his death in the line of duty reporting on the Okinawa campaign in 1945.
Pyle studied journalism at Indiana University and left school to become a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Later, after various editorial jobs, he acquired a roving assignment for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain; his daily experiences furnished him material for a column that eventually appeared in as many as 200 newspapers before World War II.
Pyle’s coverage of the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France brought him a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1944, as well as several other awards. The motion picture G.I. Joe (1945) was about Pyle’s coverage of the Italian campaign. He was with the U.S. forces in the Pacific on Iwo Jima, and during the Okinawa campaign he visited the nearby island of Ie Shima, where he was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire. Compilations of his columns appeared in book form: Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Here Is Your War (1943), Brave Men (1944), and Last Chapter (1946).
