Last month, The Southern Newspaper
Publishers Association presented Dink NeSmith with a Carmage Walls Commentary
Award during SNPA’s News Industry Summit in Sarasota, Fla. NeSmith placed
second in the under 50,000 newspaper circulation category for a series of six
columns published in The Press Sentinel in January through this past April.
Judges said NeSmith, chairman and
owner of
The Press-Sentinel, demonstrated a fantastic ability to turn a great
phrase that drives home a point. Vivid lines like, "I know of no one
who would lick their lips to eat hog meat that, in its previous life, had
wallowed in beryllium, mercury, lead or arsenic-tainted mud or slurped
Penholloway Creek water that was downstream of a coal-ash dump" captured
judges’ imaginations, as they read about the important local issue of coal
ash disposal. Judges said, "Editorials on environmental topics can
easily turn into something that reads like a government report, but NeSmith
avoided that pitfall and got results."
The judges noted that the high
quality of entries in this year's contest made choosing winners particularly
difficult. They said the communities served by all of the writers who
submitted entries are fortunate to have passionate advocates writing for their
local newspapers. John Hackworth, editor of the Charlotte Sun in Port
Charlotte, Fla., took first-place honors in the under
50,000 circulation category for his column about a Charlotte Correctional
Institution inmate that was beaten to death. The column also earned Hackworth a
Pulitzer Prize earlier this year.
“Coming in second to a Pulitzer
Prize winner is an honor in itself,” NeSmith said. "However, the prize
that I really want is to keep toxic coal ash out of Wayne County. Our Coastal
Georgia environment is too fragile to withstand such an enormous amount of
pollution risk. If it takes years to accomplish that goal, we are willing
to do all we can and then some.”
The prize is 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. The SNPA commentary honor comes with a
$500 prize, which NeSmith is donating for the two-to-one match of the legal
defense fund with the Center for a Sustainable Coast.
Those contributions are earmarked
to fight Republic Services’ plan to haul in a projected 10,000 tons of toxic
coal ash—daily—into the Broadhurst Environmental Landfill.
SNPA is an association, founded in
1903, including more than 500 print and digital newspapers in the Southeastern
United States.
