KPA Blogs

By DAVID GREER
KPA Member Services Director

The past, present and future of Kentucky and its many fine newspapers – that will be the primary focus of the 2009 KPA convention Jan. 22 and 23 at the Galt House Hotel & Suites in downtown Louisville. Convention goers will be treated to a viewing of the famed KentuckyShow! multimedia presentation and hear Gov. Steve Beshear speak at the Friday Changing of the Guard luncheon. A third of our convention breakout sessions will be devoted to online and new media. That includes sessions on social media for newspapers, web site design and learning how to animate your online ads.

 But the convention won’t forget the all-important topics of advertising, editorial and circulation as KPA brings in top-notch nationally known speakers on a variety of topics.

Read the rest of this entry

By DAVID GREER
KHSJA Administrator

 The Kentucky High School Journalism Association hit the century mark plus one during the current school year. No, not years. KHSJA has only been around for a dozen years but has 101 member schools for the 2008-09 school year.

 But we want more.
Read the rest of this entry

Contact Brian Steffens, Executive Director
briansteffens@nna.org
National Newspaper Association
573-882-5800

COLUMBIA, MO — Strong communities are all about strong relationships and connections: citizens and their government; citizens and community businesses; local government and local businesses; citizens and local social or cultural institutions. Nothing facilitates or creates those relationships and connections like America’s community newspapers. In cities and towns served by a community newspaper of 25,000 circulation or less, 86% of the population read a community newspaper each week. No other media has that kind of reach into and throughout those communities.

Read the rest of this entry

A group of enthusiastic citizen journalists and citizen-journalists-to-be attended the first KPA Citizen Journalist Workshop on Thursday, Nov. 13. And judging by their support for the concept, it won’t be the last KPA Citizen Journalist Workshop.
Read the rest of this entry

State Rep. Brent Yonts, D-Greenville, has prefiled a bill for the 2009 session of the Kentucky General Assembly that would protect the rights of student journalists and their teachers/advisers in Kentucky.
Read the rest of this entry

The Rev. John Crystal Morris was born in Rector, Ark., in 1899. The man whose life spanned all or parts of three centuries was 108 years old and still writing his newspaper column for the Ohio County Times-News in Hartford when he passed away on Oct. 27, 2008 – just three weeks shy of his 109^th birthday.

Read the rest of this entry

By John Foust
Raleigh, NC

 In the 1980s, International Paper ran an award-winning “Power of Print” ad campaign, featuring a series of educational subjects - each delivered by a well-known literary figure. Here’s a sampling:
- “How to write a business letter” by Malcolm Forbes
- “How to read faster” by Bill Cosby
- “How to write with style” by Kurt Vonnegut
- “How to read an annual report” by Jane Bryant Quinn
- “How to enjoy poetry” by James Dickey
- “How to make a speech” by George Plimpton
- “How to improve your vocabulary” by Tony Randall
Read the rest of this entry

As of Oct. 28, 92 schools are members of the Kentucky High School Journalism Association for the current school year. Of those, 76 percent have had their 2008-09 membership fees paid by sponsoring newspapers, organizations or individuals. Newspapers alone have accounted for 65 percent of the KHSJA-sponsored schools to date. 

Kentucky papers sponsoring schools in the past several days  include:

Read the rest of this entry

COLUMBIA, MO — Just when Americans find themselves drawn to news reports from a contentious presidential election and deflating economic challenges, new research from the National Newspaper Association (NNA) again demonstrates that Main Street America relies upon community newspapers to inform and empower citizens from coast to coast. In a follow-up to its landmark 2005 research and 2007 update, NNA finds that 86 per cent of adults read a local community newspaper each week, which compares with 83% in 2007 and 81% in 2005. The survey was conducted this past summer, before the presidential race heated up and the stock market took a dive.

“This is in stark contrast to news reports trumpeting the decline, if not demise, of newspapers,” says John Stevenson, president of NNA and publisher of the Randolph Leader in Roanoke, AL. “We learned three years ago that we had a different story to tell, and with this second update we again prove that our initial findings hold up.”

Read the rest of this entry

BY DAVID T. THOMPSON
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
KENTUCKY PRESS ASSOCIATION

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Or so the saying goes.
But we’re about to find out if that’s true.
For the past several months, KPA has been going through a Strategic Planning process. It’s involved the board, a committee of the board, the staff, interviews with individuals, a membership survey, a survey of 49 of the 50 state press associations and a session with some college students.

Read the rest of this entry