Columnists Elect New Prez and Nix Online Prize

By: Dave Astor The National Society of Newspaper Columnists elected a new president and voted down a proposed online award during the final session of its annual meeting here.

Suzette Martinez Standring, a self-syndicated columnist regularly featured in The Milton (Mass.) Times, will serve a two-year term as head of NSNC. She succeeds Mike Leonard of The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind. Michael Argento of the York (Pa.) Daily Record was elected to succeed Standring as vice president.

The NSNC, which already has an award for online newspaper columnists, discussed whether to add another award -- on a one-year trial basis -- for online columnists not affiliated with newspapers. Several speakers said a lot more non-newspaper than newspaper people write for the Web and that perhaps the NSNC needs to respond to this reality. And Leonard noted that a number of these online writers "aspire to get into newspapers."

But several attendees spoke against the proposed prize. NSNC Web editor Jim Boughton said online people have their own organizations and awards. Others added that there are so many people (including bloggers) writing online that the NSNC would be overwhelmed by entries -- and that online writers aren't always good writers. "Far too many people are doing poorly written columns on the Internet," said W. Bruce Cameron of Creators Syndicate. "They don't represent the best of our craft."

The final vote was 60% against and 40% for the award.

Also, the NSNC voted to explore the possibility of some sort of partnership with the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop (held every other year) and the University of Dayton.

Other changes in NSNC leadership announced in New Orleans: Robert Haught, who writes for The Oklahoman of Oklahoma City, is moving from newsletter editor to secretary -- replacing Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram columnist Dave Lieber. Michelle Marr, a California-based freelance columnist, replaces Haught as newsletter editor. Russell Frank, a Penn State journalism professor who also writes a column, succeeds Joe Blundo of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch as education chair. Lieber, with the help of Boughton, will chair next June's NSNC conference in Grapevine, Texas. And James Casto of The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, W.V., will succeed Lieber as president of the NSNC Foundation.