Washington, DC (NNPA) — Award-winning journalist George E. Curry has been named editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, a position he held from 2001-2007, it has been announced by Karl B. Rodney, chairman of the NNPA Foundation, which oversees the wire service
“We are pleased that George Curry, a nationally known journalist, has agreed to return to the NNPA family,” said Rodney, publisher of the New York Carib News. “Because he has served in the position before and knows Washington, D.C. so well, all of our newspapers will immediately benefit from George’s experience and contacts. I look forward to working with him again.”
Cloves Campbell, Jr., chairman of the NNPA, said: “George never really left the NNPA. He moderated many of our panels at our national conventions and has always been there when we needed him. We are delighted that he has agreed to direct the News Service.”
Curry was named Journalist of the Year in 2003 by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) for overhauling the NNPA News Service. The University of Missouri School of Journalism presented him with its Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, an honor it had earlier bestowed on such luminaries as Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Cronkite, John H. Johnson and Winston Churchill.
Curry is the former editor of Emerge magazine. Under his leadership, Emerge won more than 40 national journalism awards. He launched a 4-year campaign that led to President Bill Clinton pardoning Kemba Smith, a 22-year-old woman who was given a mandatory 24 ½ year prison sentence for her minor role in a drug ring. While serving as editor of Emerge, Curry was elected president of the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), the first African-American to hold the organization’s top post.
Prior to running the NNPA News Service, Curry was also a reporter for Sports Illustrated, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and served as a Washington correspondent and New York bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune. Read the full story at the Madison Times.
