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| Jeff Gerritt |
Gerritt's entry included commentary on the newspaper’s “Death Without Conviction” series that examined the deaths of county jail prisoners from medical neglect before they got their day in court. The contest judged called his writing “A bold, focused cry for decency and justice, in the best tradition of journalists challenging the powerful for the benefit of all.”
The Headliner Awards contest, sponsored since 1934 by the Press Club of Atlantic City, attracts entries from the nation’s largest newspapers. Second place for editorial writing went to Tom McNamee, editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Gerritt also won a Headliner Award in 2009, as an editorial writer and columnist for the Detroit Free Press. He has been the editor of the Palestine Herald-Press since 2018, according to Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., which owns the paper.
CNHI's news vice president, Bill Ketter, told The Rural Blog, "Jeff Gerritt has a special talent for offering serious thoughts on serious issues with sprightly, persuasive writing. No fuzziness or wishy-washiness in his editorials. He writes clearly, with a point that’s based on knowledge, common sense and facts. The Headliner Award for Editorial Writing is a prime example of recognizing those traits. His series of editorials on the poor state of medical and mental health treatment for county jail inmates in Anderson County -- and county jails across Texas -- can only be described as a small town paper successfully taking on a bigtime problem."
Ketter said the series "led to the local sheriff saying he would not run for re-election, a state legislative review of county jail oversight standards, and a Texas Rangers investigation into the death of a woman suffering a life-threatening condition in the Anderson County Jail."
Gerritt's writing has also won the Sigma Delta Chi and Scripps-Howard awards. Ketter said Gerritt was deputy editorial-page editor of the Toledo Blade "before deciding he wanted to become the editor of a community newspaper in rural Texas."
The Herald-Press recently announced that it is reducing the number of its weekly print editions from five to three, making it a weekly under a longstanding industry rubric that is increasingly becoming outdated.
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/3fluDvw Editor of Texas daily-turned-weekly wins National Headliner Award for editorials, including those about deaths in local jail - Entrepreneur Generations
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