InkBlots

Keelan Sanders, executive director of the Mississippi Democratic Party and Terry Cassreino, communications director for the party, met recently with The Meridian Star’s Editorial Board to the upcoming elections.

The state party has started its own newspaper, which Cassreino, a former Star staffer, edits.

Jim Gray was named publisher of the New Albany Gazette last week. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Gray has been in the newspaper business for over 30 years. He succeeds Ryan Bramlett… Leslie Hurst has been named president and publisher of The Daily Advertiser, the Daily World and The Times of Acadiana, LA. She is a former publisher of The Hattiesburg American…Judi Terzotis, publisher of the Murfreesboro, TN Daily News Journal, is joining The Clarion-Ledger as advertising director. Her husband, Bob Terzotis, is in tow and will become circulation director. They succeed Craig Hatcher and Lee Warmouth, respectively, who were not married.

The Clarion-Ledger and The News-Star of Monroe, La., received the Margaret Dixon Award on Friday at the Associated Press Managing Editors meeting for Louisiana and Mississippi. The Jackson AP staff selected the Sun Herald for the Mark Twain Award for Mississippi.

More from the event…The Jackson paper took over a dozen awards at the meeting.

The Hattiesburg American captured 20 awards.

The Greenwood Commonwealth won seven, including four first place awards.

The Mississippi Press took three awards.

The Daily Leader in Brookhaven won four.

The Daily Journal, a model of restraint these days, waited a week to announce its 23 awards.

Props to the Natchez Democrat for its 30 awards. Count ‘em.

Clarion-Ledger editorial director David Hampton, a board member for the Press Association, explains the newspaper’s efforts to broaden its online opinion section.

Robbie Robertson, publisher of The Newton Record since 2003, has set up a second office in Kosciusko following the departure of Mark Thornton. So far, he likes what he’s found in the “Beehive of the Hills.”

Oklahoma-based Family Media, owner of the Sun-Sentinel in Ripley and Ashland Southern Advocate, has sold the Phenix Citizen-News in Georgia.

Bryan Doyle bids adieu as editor of the Daily Mississippian and ponders whether advisor Marty Russell has superhuman powers.

Chauncey Mabe of the South Florida Sun Sentinel reviews author Kevin Sessums‘ memoir “A Mississippi Sissy” and references Jackson Daily News art editor Frank Haines, who Mabe says “welcomed [Sessums] into the small circle of progressive Mississippi intelligentsia” of the period.

Mississippi Press correspondent Steve Burtt has seen a lot of our great state during his career…”Having worked 18 years in the newspaper business at mostly family operated newspapers throughout the state, I’ve lived like a nomad for most of my life. I’ve worked in Jackson, McComb, Pearl, Greenwood, Charleston, Tupelo, Hattiesburg and now Jackson County. And newspaper work always gives you a good taste of the flavor and history of each section. I’ve been to the Sweet Potato Festival in the Sweet Potato capital of the world, Vardaman, and I’ve eaten catfish at the Catfish Festival in Belzoni. Heck, I even milked a cow at Dairy Day in Tylertown.”

Wesley Pruden, editor-in-chief of The Washington Times, recalls the golden age of journalism, laments the decline in major metro circulations and elevates The Commercial Appeal to Biblical status…”During the Civil War, as the Yankees closed in on Memphis, the editor took a few sticks of lead type and his hand press, commandeered a railroad car on a passing train headed south and for the next few months the newspaper was published in a half-dozen states. The Yankees ran it to ground in Alabama three years later. When I was a reporter on “the Old Reliable” in an earlier century, the newspaper was held in such high repute that once, when the bailiff of a Mississippi court couldn’t find a Bible to swear in a witness the judge sent him down to the depot for a copy of the Commercial Appeal. ‘Make sure it’s a fresh copy, with no fingerprints on it,’ His Honor told him. Try that with a laptop.”

Garthia Elena Halbert is moving from Columbus to Murfreesboro, TN, but not before she reminds the readers of The Commercial Dispatch how she earned her paycheck over the last year-and-a-half deciphering stories within stories within stories…”I borrowed the phrase from a well-loved and just as hated local journalist. That same journalist taught me, there’s always a story within a story, and somewhere in the midst of that is the ‘real’ story…So the story is I’m starting a new job. And the story within that story is I’m leaving the paper where my career began - the paper where they took a chance on an inexperienced college kid and molded my rough beginnings into the journalist I am today.”

Robbie Ward, former reporter for the Tupelo Daily Journal, has taken up pro bono defense work since departing the newspaper: He’s asked the City of Starkville to pardon Johnny Cash for an arrest in 1965 when the now-very-dead singer was then-very-drunk. Allegedly.