Carmage Walls Nominations: "under 50,000" circulation (group 3)

This annual award, to be presented during the joint SNPA-Inland Annual Convention, Oct. 6-8 in Chicago, Ill., recognizes outstanding commentary on local issues. It encourages thoughtful, courageous and constructive editorial page leadership on issues specifically relevant to each newspaper's primary readership.

The prize was named for the late Benjamin Carmage Walls whose newspaper career spanned seven decades. Walls primarily owned community newspapers and advocated strong, courageous and positive editorial page leadership.

Following are 12 entries submitted in the "Under 50,000" circulation bracket.  Judges in this category should narrow the entries to the top 4.  Those four entries, together with the top four from two other sets of entries, then will be evaluated to detemine the winners in this bracket. 

After your panel has narrowed the entries to the top four, you are invited to participate in the judging of the final "best of the best" bracket, if you would like to do so.  If you are willing to read the top entries from the other two brackets and take part in the call to determine overall winners, please email cindy@snpa.org.

Thank you for your help in judging this year's contest!

Click on the links below to access entry materials:

Entry #1: David Bloom - The Baytown Sun, Baytown, Texas

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  • Superintendent future in limbo
  • Save the superintendent, oust the board
  • GC board: Let people speak
  • A spurious way to conduct public business
  • Get to work Goose Creek

Entry #2: Mike Clark - The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville, Fla.

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  • Groveland Four deserve full pardon for unjust convictions

Entry #3: Eric Fleischauer - The Decatur Daily, Decatur, Ala.

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  • Sheriff's secrecy an affront to public
  • Promising start for new Morgan sheriff

Entry #4: Jeffery Gerritt - Palestine Herald-Press, Palestine, Texas

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  • Unlock jailhouse doors
  • State created jail standards -- now enforce them
  • What are they hiding?
  • Sheriff should release medical records to Newsome's family
  • Permit clergy in execution chamber

Entry #5: Valarie Harring - Cape Coral Breeze, Cape Coral, Fla.

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  • Going 'green'
  • Environmental hurricane
  • Support the cause, support your neighbors
  • Winds of change
  • Battle won, fight goes on
  • Weigh in on water quality policies

Entry #6: Franklin Harris - The Decatur Daily, Decatur, Ala.

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  • Robert J. Bentley, will you please go now?

Entry #7: Greg Harton - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Fayetteville, Ark.

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  • The verdict is in
  • Make 'em pay
  • Legislative reckoning
  • Give it back
  • Slave to the lender
  • Can trust be restored?

Entry #8: Donna Provencher - The Kerrville Daily Times, Kerrville, Texas

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  • No room at the inn
  • Provencher (continued)
  • Still here and speaking up
  • Provencher (continued)
  • Why not give life a test drive?
  • Sometimes heroes help you save yourself

Entry #9: Michael A. Smith - The Galveston County Daily News, Galveston, Texas

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  • Today is a day to mourn our losses
  • We should study how mass killers come to be
  • A solution lies between no-guns, more-guns extremes

Entry #10: Gerry Tritz - Jefferson City News Tribune, Jefferson City, Mo.

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  • Greitens wanted his day in court -- and still deserves it
  • Greitens' undoing caused by his own actions
  • End of administration shouldn't be end of Greitens investigations
  • State correct in not paying for Greitens' legal mess

Entry #11: Gerry Tritz - Jefferson City News Tribune, Jefferson City, Mo.

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  • A quiet end of an era

Entry #12: Richard Whiting - Index-Journal, Greenwood, S.C.

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  • Some legislation seems to defy all logic
  • Put sheriff's offices under county control