| Current Poll |
Are you for armed guards at schools?
View Results
|
|
Story Archives: Sentinel recipient of Gish Award
- 2013 - 285 articles
- 2012 - 856 articles
- 2011 - 635 articles
- 2010 - 1276 articles
- 2009 - 1591 articles
- 2008 - 1763 articles
|
Sentinel recipient of Gish Award
The Concordia Sentinel and editor Stanley Nelson are the recipients of the 2011 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism.
The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky, presents the Gish Award in honor of the couple who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years. Tom Gish, who died in 2008, and his wife Pat were the first recipients of the award.
The 2011 award is presented "in recognition of the Sentinel's courage and unusual tenacity" in its coverage of the 1964 unsolved murder of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris during the era of conflict over civil rights.
Nelson said in the latest edition of Columbia Journalism Review that he was following the example of the late Sam Hanna Sr., the Sentinel's editor-publisher, who taught him that it was the newspaper's duty to ask tough questions. When the Morris case was listed on a 2007 FBI list of unsolved civil-rights murders, he knew it "would be morally irresponsible not to learn more, write more, and see who was accountable."
"Mr. Nelson's four-year effort certainly demonstrates the courage, tenacity and integrity the award was set up to acknowledge," said Ben Gish, editor of The Mountain Eagle, son of Tom and Pat Gish, and a member of the award selection committee.
Nelson and the Sentinel were nominated by Albert P. Smith Jr., co-founder of the Institute and chair of its national advisory board. A former weekly newspaper editor and publisher in Kentucky and Tennessee, Al Smith recalled his early days as state editor of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, handling news from the Ferriday area, which he said was "known on both sides of the Mississippi River for a tradition of violence, prostitution, gambling, and corrupt cops...I offer this nomination with a profound respect for all in journalism, law enforcement, political office and civic activism who have changed the culture and improved the administration of justice in Ferriday and Concordia Parish."
Nelson said the award is a "tribute to the Hannas, one of Louisiana's great newspaper families." The Hannas also publish the Franklin Sun in Winnsboro and the Ouachita Citizen in West Monroe.
The pressures on a rural, weekly newspaper are usually greater than those on its metropolitan cousins, because such newspapers have small staffs and small revenue bases, and are thus more vulnerable to advertiser and reader boycotts, upstart competition and peer pressure, said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.
"The Hanna family has set a fine example, and not just for weekly publishers," he said. "The courage, integrity and tenacity displayed by the Sentinel and Stanley Nelson are examples for everyone in journalism to follow."
The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues was created to help rural journalists define the public agenda in their communities, through strong reporting and commentary. It has academic partners at 28 universities in 18 states and offers help to rural journalists on its Web site, www.RuralJournalism.org, on The Rural Blog at http://irjci.blogspot.com, and through seminars, conferences and publications. |
|
| Frank Morris Murder Series |
|
|
E-mail Story
Print Story
