NSNC to Recognize 2026 Annual Columnist Contest Winners

Join or Renew Your NSNC Membership

Consider a Gift to the NSNC Education Foundation

NSNC to Recognize 2026 Annual Columnist Contest Winners

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists (NSNC) President and Board of Directors are pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 Annual Columnist Contest at an online awards celebration on Thursday, July 23 at 7 p.m. EST. If you would like to join us for the awards ceremony, email nsncdirector@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

Join or Renew Your NSNC Membership

Welcome! Whether you write for newspapers, magazines, newsletters, trade journals or you create a podcast or write digital content, or you manage your own blog … whether you’re on staff, a freelancer, syndicated, self-syndicated or independent, if you write opinion or provide commentary, we invite you to join the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Join us at https://www.columnists.com/join-or-renew-membership/.

Consider a Gift to the NSNC Education Foundation

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation is a tax-exempt charitable organization [501(c)3] devoted to the education and training of new and experienced columnists everywhere. Donate here: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/NSNCEdFnd

Conference Moves to Hartford; Astor New Vice President

Downtown Hartford, Conn.

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…

Mercer’s Collaborative Journalism Gets Times Profile

Center for Collaborative Journalism at Mercer University

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…

Foreign Affairs Op-Ed Writing Has Lessons for All

Stoopendaal Map of the World - 1730

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…

NSNC President Larry Cohen Dies

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,…

New Memoir Highlights Columnists and NSNC

When you stay in one job for a quarter century as Comic (and Column) Confessional author Dave Astor did, it helps to have good reasons for doing so. Here are a few: Heloise, Arianna Huffington, Ann Landers, Abigail Van Buren, David Broder, Ellen Goodman, George Will, Erma Bombeck, Dave Barry, Art Buchwald, Walter Cronkite, Hillary…

Searching for Truth in the News, Today?

Hartford Courant

President’s Message By Larry Cohen President National Society of Newspaper Columnists Decades ago, the Hartford (Conn.) Courant shipped me off to the national conclave of the Episcopal Church, in Louisville. The Anglican natives were restless. There was news to be reported. Sure enough, the assembled faithful slapped around the sort-of-liberal church leadership at the time…