Issue # 890 | January 9, 2016 | | |
In this Issue:
Now Accepting Entries and seeking Judges for the 2025 Awards for Excellence Contest; Hoffman Media purchases Lee Enterprises; Richard Wager remembered as 'champion of First Amendment and Hudson Valley'; Camille Bromley and Doug Watson Join New York Times Opinion; Roll out the red carpet! The California Post to launch on January 26: ‘A game-changer’ for the Golden State; Polymarket and Dow Jones, Publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Announce Exclusive Prediction Market Partnership; Breaking down the Gray Lady’s lawsuit against the Pentagon; Poynter and Hacks/Hackers partner to keep fast AI adoption aligned with journalism ethics; The deadline to apply for the 2026 Ida B. Wells Society Investigative Reporting Fellowship is Sunday, January 11; Enter Golden Quill contest, entries deadline Feb. 2, 2026; Plus, newspaper training webinars and special events.
| | |
We're Now Accepting Entries and seeking Judges for the 2025 Awards for Excellence Contest
The New York News Publishers Association is now accepting entries for its 2025 Awards for Excellence competition, our annual contest, which recognizes journalistic and advertising excellence among the association’s member newspapers.
Once again, entries for the annual contest will be collected online. The deadline to submit entries is March 17, 2026, at 5:00 p.m.
The NYNPA Excellence Awards contest now includes an award for
Best Newspaper Website—honoring standout content, design, usability, and community impact.
Visit our website for more information about the contest.
If you have questions about the competition, contact Margaret McDermott at (518) 449-1667 or mmcdermott@nynpa.com.
The parameters for contest judges are:
- Judging starts in April of 2026.
- Five judges are required for journalism and five for advertising.
- Qualified judges include those with experience in newspaper journalism and/or advertising who are not currently employed by a member newspaper of NYNPA.
- Each judge will be responsible for judging all categories within each circulation group, which amounts to approximately 100 entries per judge. Judges can expect to review entries in early April and will have six weeks to complete their assignments. All submissions will be reviewed online.
- Judges may seek assistance from colleagues as part of the evaluation process.
Interested, or would like to nominate someone else? Contact Margaret at 518-449-1667 or mmcdermott@nynpa.com.
| | |
Hoffmann Media seizes control at Lee Enterprises in $50M investment deal
From editorandpublisher.com - Lee Enterprises has entered a new era of financial and board leadership following a $50 million equity investment led by Hoffmann Media — a move that restructures governance, slashes borrowing costs, and signals aggressive plans for transformation.
David Hoffmann, principal of Hoffmann Media Group, is now chair of Lee’s board and is personally contributing about $35 million of the funding. According to the official press release, Hoffmann has fully backstopped the offering, guaranteeing the full $50 million raise regardless of other investor participation.
The equity deal, priced at $3.25 per share, includes another $15 million from existing Lee investors and is expected to close pending shareholder approval. A special meeting will be held in the first quarter of 2026.
“This transaction strengthens the company’s balance sheet and reflects the board’s determination to take decisive action,” Hoffmann stated, positioning the investment as a lever for long-term value creation. His new board leadership cements Hoffmann Media’s influence as the driving force behind Lee’s next chapter. More
| | |
Richard Wager remembered as 'champion of First Amendment and Hudson Valley'
From Poughkeepsiejournal.com - Richard "Dick" K. Wager's Hudson Valley journalism legacy, as the former publisher of the Poughkeepsie Journal for 27 years, is etched into the memories of those who worked with him.
Wager, 86, died peacefully at home with his family at his side on Dec. 22.
The lifelong Hyde Park resident spent his 44-year career at the Journal. Wager even delivered the paper as a boy for the Poughkeepsie New Yorker, a predecessor to the Poughkeepsie Journal.
He was a champion of public-service journalism, promoting newsroom diversity and upholding high ethical standards, as written in his obituary.
Wager worked his way up from reporter to the Journal's top editor and then publisher.
Barry Rothfeld, the Journal's editor from 1990-94, as well as president and the publisher succeeding Wager from 2004 until his retirement in 2015, said in a statement Wager was a "true journalism legend," and Rothfeld felt "privileged to serve under him." More
| | |
Camille Bromley and Doug Watson Join New York Times Opinion
From New York Times Press Release - Read more in this note from Meeta Agrawal.
I am delighted to announce two new colleagues in Opinion.
Camille Bromley is joining the special projects team as a staff editor. Camille is an editor specializing in long-form features. She has commissioned and edited stories that have been finalists for National Magazine Awards, anthologized in the Best American series and adapted for “This American Life” and other media. Most recently, she was a features editor at Wired, where she covered rapidly emerging technologies with features on the rise of generative A.I., Silicon Valley’s political shift right and crypto’s boom and bust. Before Wired, Camille was a features editor at The Believer, where she brought in stories we’ve long been envious of, like Vauhini Vara’s “Ghosts” and Meghan O’Gieblyn’s “Good Shepherds.” She has also been a story editor at Columbia Journalism Review and Harper’s Magazine. More
| |
Roll out the red carpet! The California Post to launch on January 26: ‘A game-changer’ for the Golden State
From nypost.com - A new era of common sense and accountability arrives in California on January 26.
That is the launch date of the California Post — the brand new, seven-days-a-week digital and print newspaper for the Golden State.
The sister publication to the New York Post brings all the hard-charging, plain-spoken journalism of The Post to the West Coast.
In announcing the date, California Post editor-in-chief Nick Papps said, “It’s time to hold the powerful to account and start fighting for hard-working Californians.
“The California Post will be a game-changer across news, sports, opinion and entertainment,” Papps said. More
| | |
Polymarket and Dow Jones, Publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Announce Exclusive Prediction Market Partnership
From Dow Jones Press Release - Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, and Dow Jones, a global provider of news and business information and a division of News Corp (Nasdaq: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV), today announced an exclusive partnership to make Polymarket’s real-time prediction market data available across Dow Jones consumer platforms, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch and Investor’s Business Daily.
The collaboration will provide audiences with greater visibility into prediction market signals across a range of economic, political and cultural topics, offering a new lens for understanding how markets assess probabilities and future outcomes. Polymarket data will be displayed through dedicated data modules on Dow Jones digital properties, including homepage and market-related pages, as well as through select print placements. More
| | |
Breaking down the Gray Lady’s lawsuit against the Pentagon
From rcfp.org - RCFP explains the legal theories advanced by The New York Times in its lawsuit challenging the Pentagon's new press policy.
It’s been two months since virtually the entire Pentagon press corps were forced to turn in their credentials following the U.S. Department of Defense’s imposition of a new policy that could put those credentials in jeopardy for acts of journalism.
The most recent development in the controversy is The New York Times’s lawsuit, filed in the first week of December, claiming that the new Pentagon policy violates the First Amendment. We thought a short summary and explainer of the legal theories advanced by the Gray Lady might be helpful for this edition of our newsletter.
First, however, a bit of scene setting. Less than two weeks after the inauguration, and seven days after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth assumed office, the Pentagon announced a new “rotation” program removing certain major news outlets from their dedicated spaces in the building in favor of other outlets.
Then, in May, the Defense Department restricted physical press access further. In a memorandum to the press corps, the Pentagon limited unescorted access in designated areas to, it said, “reduce the opportunities for in-person inadvertent and unauthorized disclosures.” The memo stated that journalists holding press passes granting them access to the Pentagon would have to sign a new “in-brief form” to maintain those credentials. More
| | |
Poynter and Hacks/Hackers partner to keep fast AI adoption aligned with journalism ethics
From poynter.org - Since the 2022 launch of ChatGPT and the rise of generative artificial intelligence, the news industry has struggled to adapt — with a series of AI blunders that have frayed audience trust.
As AI rapidly reshapes the media landscape, Poynter is helping people understand how the technology works and how it should be used responsibly. Through practical AI training, ethical guidance and media literacy programs, Poynter’s work supports transparent, trustworthy adoption as the technology continues to evolve. The Poynter Institute has hosted two summits on AI, ethics and journalism that have established guidelines to encourage responsible innovation and minimize risk of damage to newsrooms’ reputations. This year, instead of a single convening, Poynter and its digital media literacy initiative MediaWise will partner with independent journalism and technology nonprofit Hacks/Hackers — a crucial partner on both summits — to build AI ethics, literacy and programming into AI and journalism events throughout the year as its ethics, governance and literacy partner. More
| | |
Are Tech Companies Allies or Threats to Press Freedom?
From cjr.org - In 2026, this will be the question that matters most to journalists.
Last month, I attended a conference put on by the Ditchley Foundation titled “The Role of the New Fourth Estate in Renewing Democracy.” The central question that arose concerned the proper relationship between the people who provide information and the profit-seeking distributors of that content. Are journalists and publishers, creators and platforms, really allies in the knowledge economy? Or are their fundamental aims so at odds that any alliance is not just undesirable but dangerous?
The extent to which tech platforms act against the interests of a free press has always been a subject of contention. The increasing entanglement of US foreign policy with the health of tech platforms and AI companies, and the undeniable hostility of the current US government toward journalists, has further implications for the future relationship between tech companies and the press. Meta’s withdrawal from support for third-party fact-checking, a year ago, and Google’s cooling on similar schemes were an early warning of the ways that the industry would align itself with the Trump administration.
The Ditchley convening took place in a library that hosted Winston Churchill’s talks during World War II. There was a discreet buzzing of phone alerts among the crowd, signaling a collective apprehensiveness. In the news: the European Union had just fined X, Elon Musk’s social platform, one hundred and twenty million euros for failing to comply with transparency standards imposed by the Digital Services Act. More
| |
The deadline to apply for the 2026 Ida B. Wells Society Investigative Reporting Fellowship is Sunday, January 11
From idabwellssociety.org - This no-cost, intensive program will bring professional journalists to Atlanta to sharpen their investigative reporting skills under the guidance of some of the most accomplished reporters and editors in the industry. The fellowship is intended for journalists not presently assigned to investigative teams.
Interested applicants must work with their newsroom leadership to ensure their availability to attend. Proposed projects should also be cleared by leadership to ensure their publication upon completion. Freelance journalists are also invited to apply.
During the program, participants will work on projects they have proposed for publication in their respective newsrooms.
The selected journalists will join the Society in Atlanta for up to a week each month from February through July to delve into topics related to investigative reporting.
Learn more about the program here. Apply today!
| |
Enter Golden Quill contest, entries deadline Feb. 2, 2026
From iswne.org - Golden Quill entries should reflect the purpose of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE):
Encouraging the writing of editorial or staff-written opinion pieces that identify local issues that are or should be of concern to the community, offer an opinion, and support a course of action.
Eligibility: All newspapers of less than daily frequency (published fewer than four days per week) are eligible to enter. Online-only newspapers must be considered community news sites. Syndicated columnists are not eligible. Entries must have been published between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2025.
Cost: $15 entry (each editorial or column) per person for ISWNE members and $20 for non-members. There will be no charge for student entries. (There is a separate division for student entries.) Three entries are allowed per person. Click here for more information.
| |
In a New York Minute is the weekly electronic newsletter of NYNPA, providing you with member news, money-saving and money-generating ideas, and upcoming events. If you would like to contribute to this newsletter please reply to this e-mail or contact mmiller@nynpa.com. For more on NYNPA please visit us on the web at www.nynpa.com.
Mary Miller
Education Services Director
New York News Publishers Association
| | | | |
