President’s Message By Eric Heyl President National Society of Newspaper Columnists The question is well worth pondering. “Why aren’t we promoting the value of NSNC membership?” The query was posed recently in an unsolicited email from long-time NSNC member and author Anne Louise Grimm. Her message recommended selling the organization’s merits not just to columnists,…
These are the rules for the 2013 column contest, covering columns published in the 2012 calendar year. (This can stand as a template for revisions in 2014!) First place in each category will receive $300, second place $200 and third place $100, in addition to certificates suitable for framing. Honorable mentions receive certificates. Deadline for…
John Avlon, an award-winning member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, today published his list of the best columns of 2012 in his running column in The Daily Beast. The dozen include a piece by Dave Barry, the 2013 winner of NSNC’s Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award (and Avlon slipped in a second link…
A bit after 9 a.m. local time Friday, Dec. 14, heavily armed 20-year-old Adam Lanza forced his way into Shady Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. Earlier, he killed his mother at their home. The guns he took to the school were registered to…
Honored Oregon Columnist Spreads His Talents you, the columnist By Dave Lieber www.YankeeCowboy.com When a newspaper is named to Editor & Publisher’s annual “10 Newspapers That Do It Right” list, a columnist is not usually pictured with top editors. But when The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore. was placed on the 2012 list, columnist Bob Welch…
Columnists.com celebrates Black Friday, the nation’s biggest retailing day, by announcing the publication this week of Deadline Artists — Scandals, Tragedies and Triumphs: More of America’s Greatest Newspaper Columns. In September 2011, the first collection, Deadline Artists: America’s Greatest Newspaper Columns, also compiled by Jesse Angelo, Errol Louis and NSNC member John P. Avlon, came…
“Love cats? Know someone who does? You’re going to love this,” says Stu Bykofsky. So it’s a serious, calm, reasoned book, out in time for the holidays, that pays respectful tribute to humankind’s other best friends Felis catus? You know Stu. He’s the longtime member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists who hosted its…
Art of Column Writing By Suzette Martinez Standring 2004-06 President National Society of Newspaper Columnists Years ago, op-ed was associated only with political commentary. Today, op-ed can take invented directions on current affairs. For example, how pop culture is mirrored in politics is the unique viewpoint of columnist Joanna Weiss of The Boston Globe. “Putting…
President’s Message By Eric Heyl President National Society of Newspaper Columnists Circle the dates. Trust me, it’s OK. The calendar cops won’t appear at your door to arrest you for beginning to arrange next year’s schedule with a full two months of this year still to go. With the nation’s prisons being chronically overcrowded, they…
Memoir Tells Lively Stories of Famous Cartoonists, Columnists and Author you, the columnist By Dave Lieber www.YankeeCowboy.com Book Review: Comic (and Column) Confessional: Finding Myself While Covering Syndicates, Celebrities, and a Changing Media World. By Dave Astor. Xenos Press (2012). 232 pages. Paperback. $25 Dave Astor, that quiet guy sitting in the first row at…
The board of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists voted unanimously at its Sept. 10, 2012, online chatroom meeting to move its 2013 conference from St. Petersburg, Fla., to Hartford, Conn. The weekend for the convention remains the same, June 27-30, and humor columnist Dave Barry still is to be there to accept the year’s…
A major highlight of this year’s columnists conference, “Macon Whoopee,” was a first-hand accounting of the creation of the Center for Collaborative Journalism at Mercer University in the Georgia city. Word is spreading on how Mercer’s journalism and media studies department now is in the same building cluster on campus as Macon’s daily Telegraph newsroom…
Art of Column Writing By Suzette Martinez Standring Past President National Society of Newspaper Columnists No matter what our specialty is, we can learn from columnists with a very different focus. Joel Brinkley, who also serves as the NSNC education chair, is one of only a handful of foreign affairs op-ed columnists in the United…
Larry Cohen, NSNC 2012-14 president, died Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, of a heart attack in Florida. He was 64. He had been elected May 6 by unanimous vote at the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, in Macon, Ga. Laurence D. Cohen joined the NSNC in 1996 and had experience in government,…
As the country mourns the tragic shooting in a movie theater early Friday, July 20, 2012, in Aurora, Colo., we’re also trying to think it through. Twelve people died and 58 were injured in the shooting at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie; a lone gunman is suspected. We’re all talking about it.…
The Washington Post has reported today (Tuesday, July 17, 2012) that its longtime columnist William Raspberry died today of prostate cancer. He was 76. Raspberry was the 1995 recipient of the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, presented at that year’s conference, in Kansas City, Mo. The Post article…
Tuesday, July 3, 2012 — Syndicated political columnist Clarence Page, based at the Chicago Tribune, is under fire for giving a speech, having accepted a fee, at a event in France supporting an Iranian group that the U.S. State Department terms a terrorist organization. Page is the 2007 recipient of the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement…
