We are proud to announce four of our writers recently won awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association.
Michael Davidow won first place for serious column in the online category, George Liset took second place for sports column, Garry Rayno third place for political column and Nancy West two third-place awards for crime and court reporting and investigative reporting.
Davidow’s column Radio Free New Hampshire may take you to his childhood playing catch with his dad; he may quote from Learned Hand about liberty or he may check in with Chloe Schlagobers, his favorite reporter at the New York Bleeping Times.
One column explains why people hate lawyers.
Davidow of Manchester is a defense lawyer in Nashua who shares his brilliance a couple of times a month with InDepthNH.org readers. He is also the author of Gate City, Split Thirty, and The Rocketdyne Commission, three novels about politics and advertising which, taken together, form The Henry Bell Project, The Book of Order, and his most recent one, The Hunter of Talyashevka. They are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
George Liset won for his column Writing on the Fly about fly fishing with his son Me and My Son Reed, A Quarter Century of Fly Fishing Together.
The judges said of Liset’s work: “Elegant writing style sharing insights about the outdoors.”
Liset of Dover is an outdoor writer and avid fly fisherman who shares insights of his time on the water exploring New Hampshire streams and rivers as well of those around New England. He is a graduate of Wheaton College, Illinois, and the University of New Hampshire.
“We then made the short trek up to Moose Alley and we were not disappointed,” Liset wrote. “We saw a young male starting to grow new antlers, standing ankle deep in the mud. That sight alone made it worth the trip. Although, the next week there was another young male moose spotted a mile from my house here in Dover.”
Garry Rayno’s Distant Dome is the go-to column for anyone who wants to know what’s going on at the State House, what bills are making their way through the legislative process and how things have changed or stayed the same over the last four decades.
Rayno has deep insightful institutional knowledge that helps us make sense of the world today.
Because of his vast experience, Rayno also shares his expertise reporting on the state’s educational and tax systems besides being knowledgeable about public utilities and generally, how New Hampshire works.
“The Senate put HB 625 on the table last week, where it is likely to stay until the budget is resolved. Gov. Sununu has always claimed to be pro-choice, but some pro-choice advocates are not so sure. What the Senate did was give Sununu an out so he does not have to either veto or sign the bill and can say ‘I could not veto the budget for that one provision, but I don’t like it.’
“The change would allow the usual Planned Parenthood contract to go to the Executive Council next fiscal year, but the current council is not at all likely to approve it. When you see maneuvers like this, you always wonder why Democrats never seem to be able to do the same kind of thing,” Rayno wrote.
Nancy West’s story about the defense blasting the attorney general in the Timothy Verrill double homicide case and her story about police shootings took third place.
“52 were determined to be legally justified. 4 were not deemed justified. No criminal charges were brought (including the Lafont case) even when the final report was critical of the police.”
The police shooting story was made possible by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
The judges said: “Solid reporting on an important issue facing NH and every other state in the nation.”
West is a veteran journalist who worked for many years at the New Hampshire Union Leader before starting the New Hampshire Center for Public interest Journalism six years ago.
Back to Davidow quoting Learned Hand: “What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”