The San Diego Press Club honored Linda Rosas Townson, group publisher, San Diego Neighborhood Newspapers, with a special career recognition award. On Oct. 27, at the 47th Excellence in Journalism awards, Townson received the Press Club’s Jim Reiman Award for excellence in media management.
Townson serves as publisher of SDNN, three community weekly newspapers, including The Star-News in Chula Vista, The East County Californian in El Cajon and The Alpine Sun. For the past decade, she served as senior vice president of community media overseeing business operations for 18 Southern California community newspapers published by Cypress-based Community Media Corp.
“I’m honored to receive this award, it’s very flattering and I’m grateful,” said Townson. “Don’t tell me that print community journalism is dead. Where else can you read about Little League scores, or a fireman rescuing a cat from a tree, or school news that is important to working families? My career is living proof that community journalism still matters, and we will survive because we’re providing a voice to local residents in their hometown.
Townson has survived through economic downturns, ownership changes and losing big advertisers. But the COVID-19 lockdown presented a new set of hardships. In the early months of COVID, Townson initiated a new program that was counter to her business acumen. She gave away free advertising to local businesses.
“It was the right thing to do at the time,” said Townson. “As a member of the local community, we had to do whatever we could do to support our community, especially small locally-owned businesses. Alerting our readers to which businesses had their doors open was our way to help.”
Townson is unsure how much free advertising was provided to local businesses during the spring lockdown, but she estimates the dollar value was in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Townson’s award is named after Jim Reiman, who served for many years as assistant news director at KGTV-TV/Channel 10. Reiman was considered an unsung hero of the profession, similar to many behind-the-scenes journalists who do not have a byline or appear on camera. When Reiman retired, the Press Club created the award to honor enlightened media managers and the first recipient was in 1997.
Other awards for SDNN writers in the non-daily news categories:
Jessica Brodkin Webb – The Alpine Sun – Honorable Mention, Feature – Light Subject
Isabella Paoletto – The Alpine Sun – Second Place, Feature – Serious Subject
