Donna Barrett

By CNHI News Service

Donna Barrett, president and CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings in Birmingham, Ala., is the new president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.

She was elected Monday at the group's 105th annual convention in Aventura, Fla., and is the fourth woman in SNPA history to hold the position.

The Washington Post's Anne Hull reminds us all why we are journalists in her Sept. 28 address as recipient of the Elijah Lovejoy Award at Colby College in Maine.
Click here for her inspiring remarks.

By David Joyner
CNHI News Service

Their buildings rocked and flooded by Hurricane Ike, two newspapers on the Texas coast have banded together to cover the storm’s damage and publish a joint edition.

The Port Arthur News and The Orange Leader published a combined edition Monday and Tuesday, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, said News publisher Roger Underwood. Skeleton crews are circulating the newspapers free to the few people left in those cities, which remain under mandatory evacuation orders.

By Cary Brunswick
The Daily Star
Oneonta, N.Y.

It occasionally happens that people will call or e-mail The Star with an odd request: They want us to purge the historical record (can you imagine it?) of facts that may not reflect well on them.

The most common scenario is that a former Oneonta college student, who is now in the dog-eat-dog world of job hunting and ladder climbing, out of curiosity decides to Google his or her name.

“A good local paper is essential to its users – the owner’s manual to the community."

By Kevin Slimp
Media Specialists

As “The End of the World as We Know It,” by REM, blared out of the sound system and screenshots of newspaper pages predicting the downfall of the industry filled a screen, a group of consultants, speakers and trainers met this past weekend to discuss the future of newspapers.