Morning Read: Post-Star loses Pulitzer winner
The Glens Falls Post Star has announced that one of their marquis writers, Pulitzer-winner Mark Mahoney, is leaving the paper to take a position with the New York State Bar Association.
Mark has spent the last 23 years at the newspaper, working as a reporter, regional editor, city editor and editorial page editor.
In 2009, he thrilled us all by winning the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is pretty rare for a small newspaper to win the Pulitzer, but Mark pulled it off.
Over the years, he has been involved in everything at the newspaper form handing out newspapers at the Washington County Fair to moderating debates to hosting countless editorial board meetings at The Post-Star.
My feelings about this are mixed. First, cheers to Mark for the great new gig — but I hate seeing big talent leave North Country journalism.
Last year we “lost” Jude Seymour, the crack political reporter from the Watertown area, who joined the Matt Doheny campaign.
And we also lost the Adirondack Daily Enterprise’s prolific Nate Brown, though he merely moved to a bigger market downstate.
The good news is that our own wandering big gun, David Sommerstein, is merely on sabbatical and will return to NCPR after a year away.
Tags: adirondacks, media
They lost him? I hope they find him.
Given the insane amount turnover of staff at the Post-Star (NCPR cartoonist Mark Wilson has several good pieces of reporting on this topic at my blog), even by the standards of a smaller newspaper, the loss of institutional memory is perhaps even more important than the loss of his specific talents.
The North Country has long been a breeding ground for good journalists but they have often gone on to bigger and better things. Some have managed to stay (Mary Thill is a good example) and we’ve even enticed some already well established journalists to come here (Brian Mann for one) I think it is the nature of the beast – there are great stories here but many of the news agencies, although providing great learning situations, are generally not in a position to keep the good ones from moving on to different experiences.
Mark will be missed by readers of the Post Star. I expect a turn to the blandly unimaginative right. Not that Mark was a lefty, but he had a broad, common-sense view and he was open-minded to criticism.
Who will replace him, that is the question? My guess is Bob Condon. I doubt Will Doolittle will step in unless Will (or Ken) is itching for some fistfights. On the other hand maybe the publisher enjoys watching fistfights.