CONGRATULATIONS to Claudia Kolker for her first place for editorial writing and to David Langworthy for his honorable mention. The awards came to the Chronicle editorialists from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors. Here are the winning pieces:
CLAUDIA KOLKER
"Get the lead out: Galveston officials must take responsibility for lead-poisoned children," February 11, 2008
The lead poisoning of Galveston's children is not news, not intractable and, for these reasons, not excusable.
"Can do: Hospitals, businesses and advocates took politics out of health insurance and covered 100,000 more kids," April 11, 2008
Say the words "Texas" and "health insurance," and it's pretty certain that "worst," "last" or "lost changes" will follow close behind.
"Railroaded: A chain of legal outrages victimized Ricardo Rachell," December 28, 2008
Ricardo Rachell's misfortunes first came from a shotgun -- the one that smashed his face in the mid-1990s, distorting it forever. The Texas legal system, however, had more trauma in store.
The judge, Craig Klugman, said this about Ms. Kolker's entries:
Strong positions, well reported. Few cliches were used, which is good because they need to be avoided like the plague. I especially liked the railroaded editorial, which appropriately held officials and institutions accountable.
DAVID LANGWORTHY
"U.S. Senate: __________," October 22, 2008 [This one is hidden somewhere deep in bowels of the maddening Chronicle archives. I couldn't find it, and I doubt you can either.]
"Furtive decision: Secrecy of UT regents' vote to cut UTMB jobs was wrong. Harmful vote should be reconsidered openly," December 5, 2008
Since Hurricane Ike, Galveston has been forced to rely too much on the kindness of strangers -- whether from the federal government, off-island private agencies or Austin.
"Magnetic attraction: Effective magnet schools are education's jewels -- and essential to the continued well-being of HISD," December 19, 2009
Listen carefully, and you will hear a consensus building across the HISD community: "Don't mess with our magnets" is the earnest petition of parents, students and other very interested parties. To which expression, we add our institutional voice, with a distinctly personal emphasis. Several Houston Chronicle Editorial Board members -- past and present -- have, or have had, children attending magnet schools in the Houston Independent School District.
Said the judge about Mr. Langworthy:
The writing is admirably low key, with none of the overwrought, cliche-ridden standbys of editorial writing. The editorial that stood out was the heart-felt defense of the school system and the way the writer laid out the budget realities.
* * *
Mr. Langworthy wrote editorials for only three or four months in 2008, so his accomplishment deserves an asterisk. Wait'll this year. It's an open question, however, whether his admirably low-key nice-guy approach will ever attract quite the same attention from contest judges as Ms. Kolker's fire-and-brimstone rhetoric.
Ms. Kolker's victory was bittersweet. The Chronicle dumped her in the Black Tuesday purge of March 2009. The newspaper's own account of the TAPME awards forgot to mention that she no longer works there.
Ms. Kolker's trademark rage against things local and Texan shined brightly in her three entries, but the newspaper wisely kept the editorial board's really crazy stuff out of the contest -- anti-business diatribes, jokey incitements to violence, an uncritical swoon for candidate Obama, global-warming orthodoxy, deep concern for the financial wellbeing of Hollywood, daily calls for more spending ("advocating for funding"), more taxes (directly or implicitly), more government regulations, more judicial activism, and repeated calls for Texas to turn itself into California.
Here are some nonaward-winning comments by Unca D about Chronicle editorials.
To be fair, none of this means that any editorial was necessarily wrong. Some were righteous, in my view. What these numbers show (besides a startling lack of concern for international affairs, an unhealthy tolerance for flabby writing, and a degree of plain triviality) is that the editorials were almost uniformly written from the perspective of the left.
The Chronicle argues that it has a balanced editorial column. It does, so long as balance refers to a point somewhere between the center left and the radical left.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link from the unblog.
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