Publisher Tom Lee (left) and editor David Hatfield (right). David Hatfield Adam Kurtz (left) and Jimmy Boegle (right).

By Joe Pangburn

Inside Tucson Business

Territorial Newspapers in Tucson, Ariz. received multiple awards at the ADDYs presented by the American Advertising Federation Tucson Feb. 20 including an editor receiving the Golden Pen Award.

The Tucson Weekly received seven ADDY awards, four Bronze, one Silver and two Gold for illustrations, covers, editorial spreads and photography.

“It’s interesting that our two gold awards were for illustrations and cover that were reader driven,” said Jimmy Boegle, editor of the Tucson Weekly. “The cover was done as part of a reader response to the inauguration of President Barack Obama. We asked people to send in their thoughts and responses to his inauguration, whether positive or negative. From that we came up with the cover illustration of Obama on a postage stamp.”

The illustration that received Gold was in response to the paper’s “Fiction 84” contest – where readers were asked to submit 84-word stories to the paper. The story that won the contest, Jesus Jack, was the subject of the illustration.

“It is nice to be recognized against not only newspapers, but going up against PR firms and graphic designers,” said Adam Kurtz, Territorial’s art director. “Sure there are some categories they aren’t going to enter, but covers, illustrations and editorial spreads could be open to anyone.”

The seven awards made the Tucson Weekly the most decorated newspaper in Southern Arizona at the event. There were more than 170 awards given with more than 400 entries to the contest.

David Hatfield, editor of Inside Tucson Business received the 2010 Golden Pen Award from the organization for his work in the print media business. He was one of five individuals honored that evening.

The Golden Pen Award is presented each year to a member of the advertising, public relations or print media fields for his/her contributions to advertising and the Tucson community through the use of words. The Golden Pen award winner is recognized by the advertising community, as a model for others, an exceptional professional, a leader in their field and as one who gives their time selflessly to the community and our industry.

“What a tremendous honor it is to receive this,” Hatfield said. “Looking at the past recipients of this award makes me think they must have made a mistake nominating me and then choosing me, but I am very honored with this.”

Hatfield’s career in media dates back more than 40 years, starting out as a newspaper copy boy while attending school in San Francisco, part-time radio disc jockey and working on the studio crew at a TV station.

He was hired as a reporter by the Arizona Daily Star in 1972 and covered beats including county and state government, politics until the newspaper gave up its “women’s section” in 1976 to start a features and entertainment section. That’s when he began writing a local media column, something he is still doing to this day.

Hatfield was named editor of Inside Tucson Business and AzBiz.com, the region’s business news publications in 2004.

In his time there, the publication has expanded its Web presence and has become the authority on local business news.

Mobile stats dashboard

The Wick New Media department is in the process of building mobile Web sites for all online properties residing on the Townnews CMS  (content management system) and special analytics code is being put on the mobile sites so that visitors, page views and types of mobile devices can be determined.

“We are using a free, robust tool from percentmobile.com to keep track of various statistics,” said Wick Web developer Christian Ramirez.

Mobile activity at the Daily Iberian  ( www.iberianet.com ) leads Wick sites that have a  mobile version. In the past week it received more than 2,400 page views. Not surprisingly, the most popular mobile device accessing the site is the Apple iPhone with a 63% share.

“We are starting to include mobile page views in our Wick-wide monthly Web site statistics,” said Wick new media director Peter Bakke, “The growing trend of mobile visitors to our newspaper sites is exciting. Mobile analytics will help us track that growth.”

Tucson Weekly Twitter page

Twitter may not be the “it” web site it once was, but it has proven a valuable tool in order to boost referral traffic for news sites.

Over the past few months, the Tucson Weekly and Inside Tucson Business have carefully been developing and cultivating their Twitter feeds.

For the effort put in, the Weekly is now the most-followed Twitter feed for local Tucson news and is neck and neck for the most-followed alt-weekly in Arizona. Inside Tucson Business is currently holding the number three spot, outpacing every other newspaper in the area and all but one of the local TV stations.

How did they do it?
“The other thing we were careful to do on our Twitter and Facebook feeds was to only feature our content,” said Territorial Newspapers Web Producer Nick Smith. “A lot of times you see feeds from news sites throw everything they have up, including news from Afghanistan and the latest from the entertainment world. We know they don’t have any foreign bureaus, so why pretend that you do? If I sign up for a Tucson feed, I want Tucson news.”

The use of Twitter for news organizations is two-fold. It provides a way for them to promote their content and it allows for a way to see what people are talking about. By focusing on Twitter users in Tucson, the two papers have a built-in network of not only what’s going on in town, but if a major emergency were to happen, they already have connections to people all over town who may be already on the scene.

Both papers followed users who identified themselves as Tweeting from Tucson or were followers of another local news organization’s feed. Sites like Refollow.com provided tools to quickly identify a potential audience.

“It might seem counter intuitive to spend time on social networks,” Smith said. “But when you consider that people won’t be checking your Web site at all time but they may be on Twitter all the time, it just makes sense to develop those channels.”

Larry Hurrle

ONTARIO , OR - Argus Observer and Independent-Enterprise Publisher John Dillon has announced that Independent-Enterprise General Manager Larry Hurrle has been promoted to the position of editor for both local newspapers. Former Argus Observer Editor Pat Caldwell resigned from his position following more than eight years as Argus Observer editor to pursue other interests.

The change takes place immediately.

"We wish Pat well in his future endeavors," Dillon said of the change. "We will continue to strive to bring the best local news
possible to the readers of our newspaper. Our focus will continue to be on community news because that¹s what our readers expect." Hurrle steps into a role that is familiar. He began his career at the Argus Observer in 1982 and became the newspaper¹s editor in 1991. He served in that capacity until late 2001, when he accepted a position at the Independent-Enterprise as the editor and later became general manager.

Under Hurrle¹s direction, the Independent-Enterprise newspaper in Payette was named the top nondaily newspaper in the nation with a circulation less than 5,000 in 2007 by the Inland Press Foundation. Hurrle and his wife, Debbie, make their home in Fruitland and have three children, Kris, 27, Ron, 19, and Nikki, 16. The couple also has three grandchildren.