ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602260062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
The Roanoke Times and the Martinsville Bulletin won awards for outstanding public service and journalistic integrity Saturday at the Virginia Press Association's annual awards presentation.
The managing editor of the Madison County Eagle also was honored for editorial excellence and community service at the VPA's winter meeting.
Roanoke won the association's W.S. Copeland Award for excellence among newspapers with a circulation above 30,000. Six other newspapers competed. Martinsville beat three other entries to win the Copeland Award for papers with circulation below 30,000.
Roanoke won the same award last year, and has won it six times in the award's 48-year history. Martinsville was a Copeland winner in 1973.
Roanoke's entry, a package of stories about growth, change and social issues in a Southern city, won praise from judge Dave Griffiths, an assistant professor of journalism at Penn State, for involving the reader.
Martinsville won with a yearlong series of stories about the problems and choices facing teen-agers. Category judge Virginia Mansfield Richardson, associate professor of journalism at Pennsylvania State University, noted the newspaper followed the series with editorials that challenged school and community leaders.
The W.S. Copeland Award for Journalistic Integrity and Community Service was established in 1949 by the family of the late Walter Scott Copeland, a four-term president of the Virginia Press Association and a Richmond and Newport News daily newspaper editor.
The award stresses editorial leadership as well as community service above and beyond a newspaper's circulation area. Entries must show initiative beyond the newspaper's routine scope. Papers are also judged on how well they coordinate editorials with the project or projects and on whether the effort accomplished results.
Roanoke submitted stories on development that displaced poor people, discriminatory bank lending, concern over oil storage tanks, the 1995 legislative elections and other topics.
Gregory K. Glassner, managing editor of the weekly Eagle, won the VPA's ninth annual D. Lathan Mims awards for editorial leadership and service to the community.
Glassner was chosen from among eight nominees for the Mims award, which is reserved for editorial writers at daily papers with circulation less than 40,000 and weekly papers of any size.
Judge Stephen G.M. Shenton, associate professor of journalism at Shippensburg University, praised Glassner's moving editorials about June's devastating flood and his careful investigation of federal roadblocks to flood relief.
The Mims award is named for the late editor and general manager of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB