The 2012 Winner of the Infamous Sitting Duck Award is The American Economy. Why? The American economy – Nobody likes it, and you can find statistics to back up anything you want to say about it. The National Society of Newspaper Columnists created the Sitting Duck Award, an honor bestowed each year on the crème…
The second day of the NSNC conference opened with breakfast in the beautiful Magnolia Room of the Macon Marriott where columnists heard from humorist speaker, author, and columnist Lauretta Hannon, the Cracker Queen, who told about her childhood and how she has overcome adversity and poverty with a sense of humor and a memoir about…
By Ben S. Pollock President, National Society of Newspaper Columnists Dear Larry, [NSNC Vice President Laurence D. Cohen is on the slate of nominees for the May 6 election, for 2012-14 president.] This, the columnists presidency, has been a humbling experience. I’ve had plenty of humbling experiences in my life, so I should know.…
Dave Barry. Photo by daniel portnoy www.danielportnoy.com MACON, Ga. — Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist Dave Barry will be honored with the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. The announcement was made Thursday night, May 3, in Macon, Ga., at the top of the society’s 2012 national conference, where New York…
President Ben Pollock welcomed NSNC conferees, guests, speakers, honorees, newcomers and returnees to the 36th annual NSNC conference. President Pollock said, “…this is our first visit to the Deep South. As a third-and-fourth generation Arkansan, I proudly say, ‘It’s high cotton.’” A wide range of activities have been planned by host, Ed Grisamore — too…
The Board of Directors of NSNC met May 3, 2012 in Macon, Georgia, prior to the annual conference. Ed Grisamore said he is happy to have us in Macon and expects to have 50-60 people at each conference event. St. Petersburg FL was decided on at a previous board meeting as the site of the…
A late – but most welcome – addition to the Macon 2012 program is Josh Rogers Leuty, a great-grandson of Will Rogers. Leuty, 44, was raised on a dairy farm near Bakersfield, CA by parents Eric and Bette Rogers Brandin. His grandfather, California rancher Jim Rogers, was the last surviving offspring of Will and…
By Suzette Martinez Standring NSNC Past President At writing conferences, creativity often gets short shrift in favor of growing one’s business. Supersize followers on Facebook and Twitter! Get readers a-gogging with vlogging and blogging! Strengthen your footing on the technology trail. Very helpful, yes, but when all is said and done, it is about our…
By Jesse Rifkin Student Columnist University of Connecticut – Jean Norman gazes around Paperback Trader, the small bookstore she had owned since 1980. Her eyes pause at the rows of comic books. “A young man named Jay used to stop by often for the comics,” she remembers. “He graduated in 1987 and lives in Florida…
By Suzette Martinez Standring NSNC Past President Vlogging, blogging, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter – it’s all under the umbrella of social media and I’m dog paddling in the deluge. Recently, I attended the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in Dayton, both as a presenter (Hypnotic Recall Fills the Creative Well), and as a seeker of information…
New NSNC member, Cathy Turney, announces her recently published book, “Tales of a Codependent Pet Owner.” Cathy is a San Francisco Bay Area author who has had humor stories published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Woof Magazine and the Contra Costa Times. Cathy recently won America’s Funniest Humor Showcase awards for her two stories, “An ‘i’…
A humor writer reports back from the recent Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop. By Jody Worsham If you went to EBWW 2012 looking for answers, you weren’t disappointed. Whatever question you had, it was answered. And if you didn’t like the answer you got in the first session, you could just go to the next one and…
By Ed Grisamore, NSNC Conference Chair REGISTER NOW: Registration is open for the 36th annual Conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in Macon, Ga., May 3-6, 2012. “Macon Whoopee” is the theme for this year’s conference, our first in the Old South. We’ll meet and mingle with New York Times columnist Gail Collins…
In this award wining excerpt Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and NSNC 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, discusses the radical change on the role of women in the American work force as a result of The Civil Rights Act and effective birth control.
As seen in Stars and Stripes, 4/17/12 By Terri Barnes NSNC Member and Military Wife His was the first biography I ever read — at least the first one that had real chapters and more words than pictures. I was in the fifth grade, and I have not forgotten the story of his…
Columnists’ Academy By Mike Deupree NSNC Board Member Few things concern me as much as the position that news reporters should report “truth” and not just “facts.” In a philosophy class, there are any number of ways to define “truth,” but in journalism, “truth” has only one definition: It is someone’s interpretation of the…
– APPEARING SATURDAY, MAY 5th – NSNC Conference– Macon, Georgia – Thanks to Lauretta Hannon, the Cracker Queens are finally having their say. From her wildly popular NPR segments to her boisterous one-woman show, Lauretta is showing the world a different kind of girl raised in the South—a strong, authentic, fearless, flawed, resourceful, and sometimes…
