Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 28, 1994 TAG: 9403010003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SAM G. RILEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Awards - dozens and dozens of them - are also given out each year by the Virginia Press Association. Here the categories are legion. Newspaper employees compete with one another according to whether their paper is a daily or a weekly, and also by circulation size. Awards (first, second and third place) are given for writing (15 categories), page makeup (eight categories), and art/photography (11 categories). That's a lot of awards.
It's good to see top-notch work recognized. The newspaper industry should do this. It helps recharge a journalist's batteries. It helps encourage newspaper employees to do their best work.
Awards also can help make up for low salaries, especially among the younger, newer journalists, many of whose salaries are truly a scandal to the jaybirds. Awards are to journalists what medals are to military personnel, many of whom are also modestly paid.
Despite the danger that a journalist will occasionally write for the awards committee rather than for his or her readers, the recognition these awards carry is, on balance, a good thing.
If I were in a position to create one additional award, however, it wouldn't go to a reporter, editor, photographer, editorial writer or columnist. Instead, it would be given, with all due pomp and publicity, to a seldom recognized but vital link in the journalistic chain that connects the news to the newspaper's readers: the delivery person.
While most of us snooze warmly in our beds, the deliveryman or -woman is driving through the less-than-inviting pre-dawn gloom to bring us the product of all those other award-winners.
Pre-sunrise work of this sort is tough under the best of conditions. Except for cops, people on shift work and delivery people, about the only folks up at that time of day are druggies, car thieves, second-story men and assorted creeps and heavy breathers. The work of the a.m. delivery person is not for the faint of heart.
This time of year, especially during a rough winter like this one, the job is tough enough to warrant combat pay. Ice and snow are bad enough on city streets, but in a mountainside neighborhood such as mine, dark-shrouded a.m. delivery is a real challenge. The luge run at Lillehammer has nothing on the hill that must be pulled to reach my place.
If management is up for creating such an award, I'd like to nominate the doggonest newspaper deliveryman ever to come my way. I've never met him, since rising before the sun does is not one of my more cherished pleasures. But boy, do I admire him.
Jack E. Graves, I have no idea whether you're old or young, black or white, tall and thin or short and stocky. I can attest, however, that you are amazingly dependable and utterly intrepid. Every morning my paper is right where it should be.
A couple of mornings this winter were so awful, I have no idea how you made it up my hill, unless you drove a helicopter.
Another of life's little joys out where I live is the necessity of crossing the North Fork of the Roanoke River. When the river gets angry and floods the only road into my neighborhood, I stay home. A couple of times when the river was out of its banks, Mr. Graves, you drove through hard-flowing water to get the paper delivered.
I have the impression that you would get me my paper even if there were mean men along your route shooting at you.
Mr. Graves, here's to you. You're something else.
\ Sam G. Riley is a professor of communication studies at Virginia Tech.
by CNB