There's good news tonight

There have been enough gloom and doom posts on this blog for a while. It’s time for some good news.

Headline awards come our way
Ten years ago, Regina Brett won the National Headliner Award for special columns on one subject for writing about her own cancer. Now she has won the same award for a special feature column writing about her daughter's decision with breast cancer. Regina is a BJ alum.

The Beacon Journal also got a second for its American Dream series in the 75th annual National Headliner Awards, sponsored by The Press Club of Atlantic City, N.J.

Plain dealer education reporters Scott Stephens and Edith Starzyk won a first for "Putting Teachers to the Test"

The BJ’s American Dream project also won honor mention in the Scripps-Howard Foundation’s National Journalism Awards.
The series was a year in the making and spelled out the financial crisis facing middle America, offered solutions and engaged the community for public action.

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers named the same project as a winner for public service and. the Associated Press Society of Ohio picked the series as a finalist for public service.

Click on the headline for the full list:

People still do read the newspaper
A higher percentage of adults in the Cleveland market area are reading newspapers than the national average

A newspaper audience study fby Scarborough Research found 75 percent of adults read a newspaper weekly. Cleveland came in at 86 percent just behind Rochester, the leader with 87 percent. A higher percentage of adults in Rochester are reading newspapers in print or online than in any other U.S. market. Buffalo, NY, also had 86 percent.

“This data begs the question: is the constant negative news feed on the industry warranted when newspapers are actually being read by three-fourths of the adult population? When you look at audience data, it seems irrational that advertisers are leaving newspapers because the numbers speak for themselves,” said Gary Meo, senior vice president, print and digital media, Scarborough Research. “If you are an advertiser seeking to reach a large, upscale audience, newspapers are among the most effective
media for doing so. Further, readership rates vary market-by-market and frequently defy local generalizations about declining audience. In order to obtain an accurate, in-depth portrait of newspaper health, in print and online, one needs to drill down to this local level.”

More than half of the adult population reads the newspaper even in those cities with lower than average Integrated Newspaper Audience. For example, in Bakersfield, CA, and Las Vegas, NV, (the two lowest ranking markets for Integrated Newspaper Audience), 59% of the adult population read a printed newspaper, a newspaper’s website, or did both during the past week. *Integrated Newspaper Audience is the percentage of adults in the market who have read the printed newspaper, or visited the newspaper’s website(s), or did both during the past seven days.

Grumpy Abe agrees that newspapers are still doing their job.
Former BJ political reporter Abe Zaidan who is writing a blog called Grumpy Abe had good things to say about the Plain Dealer’s “relentless” fight against corruption which, he said, is further evidence of the critical need for sustaining the hometown press.

He was not too kind in the same post to the folks who pay his pension. He writes:

“A Page One story in Friday's Beacon Journal reported how the stimulus money will be spent in the Akron area. The headline said the city's Y-bridge will be fenced. And the subhead noted, Some call plan wasteful. Fair enough, so far. But reading the entire report (quite long) to learn who objected enough to merit recognition in the headline, I found the only reference to wasteful spending was near the end of the story which said:
"Some would argue Akron's Y-Bridge project would be a waste. One person, responding to a request for stimulus comments on Akron's Web Site, wrote, 'Please do not build a fence on the Y-Bridge.”
“ One anonymous person snags the headline? You lost me.”

Blog Note to Abe: You just had to spoil our good news post.: