Hoosier State Press Association - The Indiana Publisher - Better Newspaper Contest
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/96748
Division 2 Headline Writing/Category 7 First place Signed, sealed, delivered; Comments rain on ���House of Thunder���; Boxer beats odds Sara Clifford & Megan O���Bryan, Brown County Democrat (Nashville) Comments: Clever. Great play on words. Headlines invoke nice visual images. Very strong. Second place Pretty ���wo��� man; To service, jocks flock; Black swan in a small pond Andrea Cline, Zionsville Times Sentinel Comments: Inventive, funny and has a nice flow. Third place Here, kitty, kitty: Cat burglar afoot?; Sock factory finds its match in Martinsville; Public to commissioners: Look gift horse in the mouth Sara Clifford, Brown County Democrat (Nashville) Comments: Nice use of humor and play on words, particularly with the headline about the cat burglar. Best Short Feature Story/Category 8 First place Elbert ���Bud��� Kinnett 1930-2012 ��� Final call Erika Schmidt Russell, The Journal-Press (Aurora) Comments: Poignant story honoring one of our nation���s finest! Great use of the story to show his bravery rather than simply telling it. Good use of quotes and good introduction and conclusion tying it all together. Second place ���Therapist��� is girl���s best friend Alan Stewart, The Corydon Democrat Comments: Loved this topic and how the writer showed the importance of this relationship in the girl���s development. Great quotes and storytelling. Third place Be beautiful Denise Freitag Burdette, Dearborn County Register (Lawrenceburg) Great topic ��� important to all young women! The writer did an excellent job of bringing a national topic to a local level! Great examples. Best Profile Feature/Category 9 First place The man, the myth, the music of John Franz Megan O���Bryan & Suzannah Couch, Brown County Democrat (Nashville) Comments: Very colorful story. Loved the photo gallery and video. Nice package. Thanks for telling his story. Second place Just a kid, playing a game she loves Brian Smith, The Corydon Democrat Comments: Well-written piece about a girl who doesn���t let anything stop her from doing what she wants to do. Nicely packaged too. Third place Five-year bike ride nears end in Tell City Kevin Koelling, Perry County News (Tell City) Comments: A really nice story about a man who���s doing what many of us would like to do. Nice job. ��� Signed, sealed, delivered ��� Comments rain on ���House of Thunder��� ��� Boxer beats odds Sara Clifford & Megan O���Bryan, Brown County Democrat (Nashville) Elbert ���Bud��� Kinnett 1930-2012 ��� Final call Erika Schmidt Russell The Journal-Press (Aurora) Elbert Monte ���Bud��� Kinnett, 81, left behind two families when he died early Thursday morning, March 29. He left behind his biological family of five daughters, several nieces and nephews, 10 grandchildren and nine greatgrandchildren, and sisters-inlaw. Bud also left behind a fire fighting family. A niece said her husband was surprised at his ���real name ��� Elbert Monte. I told him you can���t pick your name ... ��� One of Bud���s daughters laughed, ��� ... but he did. He was Bud.��� He was Bud to the firefighters in Aurora and other departments in the county. Bud rose to the rank of captain with the department. ���He was never a chief, he didn���t want to be. But if Bud had wanted to be chief, he could have been,��� said current Aurora Fire Chief Jeff Lane. Lawrence ���Red��� Hafenbridle and with sheriff���s deputy Allen Holdcraft, said Hagedorn. Besides Bud���s heroism in the Tandy incident, Hagedorn also cherishes a funny story about Bud. ���We had a fire call to Hillview up off of Sunnyside near the country club. Well, Bud and then Aurora Fire Company No. 2 Battalion Chief Ralph Klueber, he was also the city judge for a long time, had radioed they were en route. Well we waited and waited, and finally radioed back asking where they were. They said they were there. It turns out they were on Hilltop off of U.S. 50 not Hillview,��� said a chuckling Hagedorn. When Lane joined the department, about 25 years ago, Bud was close to retiring from active runs. Bud was living primarily at No. 2 in Cochran at that point, and when the new For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.��� The man, the myth, the music of John Franz Megan O���Bryan & Suzannah Couch Brown County Democrat (Nashville) The long hair, coarse beard and gently graveled voice of John Franz are part of the Nashville experience. Tourists come back year after year to hear him sing and play music on the corner of Franklin and Van Buren streets. Some ask him to play the same songs he played for them for a $2 tip two years ago. Others update him on their lives. Some just quietly listen. ���That corner is kind of the crossroads of the world,��� Franz, 69, said last week. Sitting in his downtown apartment, a barefoot Franz folded his hands atop his stomach and told stories about that crossroads. In 1989, he came to Brown County with a backpack, a tent, his guitar and $4 to his name. ���When I first came here, people would holler at me on the street. They���d say, ���Get a real job and a haircut.��� And they meant it,��� Franz said. ���I never thought of myself as Page 24 Chuck Hagedorn joined the Aurora Fire Department in 1980; then it was two companies ��� number one downtown and number two in Cochran. There were two things to know about Bud in those days, said Hagedorn. ���He always had a cigar and he always had to have the hose,��� said Hagedorn. Bud was manning a hose on the night of the Michael Tandy rampage in downtown Aurora in August 1983. ���Bud stayed on that hose until Tandy came up to him and pointed the gun at him and told him to drop it,��� said Hagedorn. After Tandy was shot ... ���Bud picked the hose back up and went right back to fighting the fire,��� said Hagedorn. The incident rattled him more than he ever let on, though, said Lane, adding Bud rarely talked about it. Bud could be found either at the firehouse in Cochran or out on the Ohio River on his pontoon boat fishing with a bum. I knew I was a musician before I went out there. I wasn���t begging. I felt like I was earning my money, in a really nice way, where people didn���t have to give me money if they didn���t want to. ���What a nice, volunteer way to do things.��� Franz���s music career had started years before in the Indianapolis club scene. He had a solo act and also ran open mic nights at the Rural Inn for three years. When he got tired of clubs ��� the ���musical rat race,��� he called it ��� Franz didn���t decide to leave music, he just decided to try something different. ���Saw a blind man out playing on the street. I said, ���Well, maybe I could do that,��� ��� Franz remembered. So he went to an Indian�� apolis Kroger and set up out front. He���d taken a group of friends with him for support, but when nothing went awry, he told them they could go home. Franz continued to play. Busking on the street for tips meant one thing the club scene had never offered: freedom. ���Playing out on the street is freedom, it really is. Come and go as you please. ��� Stop and talk when you want, move at your own speed,��� he said. ���I remember the day I decided that I was going to be a musician whether I made a lot of money or no money, but that���s who I was and that���s what I was going to do,��� Franz said. He took a lot of flack for that decision from friends and family. Someone even wrote a song called ���John, Get a Job.��� Music was the job, though. And it brought him here. ���It���s just the freedom of come and go, and Brown County was the place for that. Brown County is a kind of freedom.��� Celebrating freedom, honoring Franz Though Franz has been notably absent from Nashville streets this year, while recovering from a bout with colon cancer and other medical issues, there has been music on the streets. For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.���