Lee Enterprises Honors President's Awards Winners

DAVENPORT, Iowa, Oct. 27, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mary Junck, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Lee Enterprises, Incorporated (NYSE:LEE), announced today the winners of 2011 President's Awards for outstanding journalism, innovation, exceptional achievement and spirit.

"This year's winners range from our smallest newspaper to our largest, a fitting recognition of the extraordinary work we do day in and day out in every one of our 52 markets to benefit our readers, advertisers and communities," she said. "As we celebrate these exceptional achievements, we also salute outstanding work by thousands of other Lee employees every day."

EXCELLENCE IN NEWS

The news award recognizes outstanding achievement in any aspect of print and online journalism, from reporting and writing to photography, video, graphics and presentation.

Receiving awards:

• Staff of The Ledger-Independent in Maysville, Ky., for "A Road to Nowhere," a comprehensive investigation of prescription drug abuse in the region. The series of stories and video interviews detailed the surprising extent of a growing and largely unseen problem, from the toll on families to the sapping of local resources. Sharing the award are reporters Misty Maynard, Marla Toncray, Wendy Mitchell and Kate Jennings; photographer Terry Prather, designer Ian Lawson and managing editor Mary Ann Kearns. The Ledger-Independent is Lee's smallest daily newspaper, with a circulation of 7,000 households. Its digital site is maysville-online.com. Details
   
• Kurt Wilson and Vince Devlin of the Missoulian in Missoula, Mont., for their poignant, ongoing coverage of a local Marine who, through determination and community-wide support, is miraculously recovering from the loss of his legs and most of a hand in Afghanistan. This is the fifth Lee President's Award in 11 years for Wilson. He spearheaded the Missoulian's commitment to the extensive coverage and has provided memorable photography and videos for Devlin's thorough and eloquent reporting. Details
    
• The staff of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison for exhaustive coverage surrounding union protests that besieged the state capitol under the glare of the national spotlight. The mobile, web and print reporting provided context for public policy debate, as well as real-time coverage of the demonstrations and political developments. This is the State Journal's fifth Lee President's Award for news in 11 years. Details
    
• The staff of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson for immediate, massive, sensitive and authoritative coverage surrounding the shooting rampage that killed eight people and wounded 13, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Coverage began with 168 online updates the day of the shooting, drawing traffic so intense that non-shooting content had to be pulled from the state-of-the-art web and mobile servers at azstarnet.com to avoid an immediate crash. Since then, the Daily Star has been widely regarded as the primary source for information about the tragedy. This is the Daily Star's seventh consecutive Lee President's Award for news. Details
   
• Blythe Bernhard and Jeremy Kohler of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for "Who Protects the Patients?" – a four-part series that exposed Missouri's lack of urgency and effectiveness in disciplining deviant doctors. As a result of the reporting, the legislature has since passed reforms making it easier for an oversight board to suspend doctors who may be a danger to patients and giving patients access to more information about the people providing their medical care. This is Kohler's third Lee President's award for news and the fifth for the Post-Dispatch in six years. Details

The judges gave honorable mentions to:

• The staff of The Daily News in Longview, Wash., for ongoing coverage after the slaying of a local police chief. Details
   
• Marc Chase and Joyce Russell of The Times of Northwest Indiana for reporting on the condition of Civil War grave sites and prompting a large-scale effort to restore them. Details
   
• Melissa Davlin, Virginia Hutchins, Ashley Smith and Josh Palmer of The Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho, for a series on the many local issues facing Bhutanese refugees. Details

Judges for the Excellence in News category were Debra Adams Simmons, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; Tom Huang, Sunday and enterprise editor of The Dallas Morning News; and Richard Cole, dean emeritus of the School of Journalism and John Thomas Kerr Jr. Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

INNOVATION

The innovation award recognizes an individual or team for creating or significantly advancing an idea that drives revenue, builds audiences or serves customers better.

Receiving awards:

• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch for driving explosive growth in mobile advertising sales, up 20-fold in St. Louis from 2010 to 2011, as mobile page views have increased 350 percent. Currently, the stltoday.com mobile sites feature more than 50 advertisers with more than 200 campaigns a month in auto, recruitment, local retail, key accounts, majors, national and grocery. Cited for special recognition are Lindsey Brown, Ian Caso, Sarah Gerrein and Paul West for both leading the effort and for sharing learnings across the company through conference calls, webinars and sales rallies.
   
• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch for developing a niche business that creates, hosts and optimizes interactive websites for advertisers. Digital Marketing Solutions began serving advertisers in the St. Louis market in 2010 and has expanded to include Northwest Indiana, totaling 164 sites so far. Cited for special recognition are Ian Caso, Steve Marshall, Amanda McGinnis, Jamie McGinnis, Kevin Sears and Michelle Smalley.
   
• The Times and Democrat in Orangeburg, S.C., for creating 'Slammin & Jammin', an interactive video contest at TheTandD.com that engaged local high schools to showcase their best basketball slam dunks and team spirit. The contest attracted enthusiastic audiences and advertisers. Nearly 21,000 viewers voted. Cited for special recognition are Emery Glover, Brian Linder, Thomas Grant and Larry Hardy.
   
• The Daily Herald in Provo, Utah, for setting the community abuzz by publishing nine life-size posters of local sports celebrities. The posters, which are printed in four parts and require assembly, began with Brigham Young University's Jimmer Fredette, the NCAA basketball player of the year. That poster and the ones that followed quickly appeared in windows, in classrooms, on storefronts and in bleachers across the community. The program is being expanded to include high schools in the coming year.
   
• The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Ariz., for creatively tapping the richness of its archives for a year-long celebration of the state's centennial, culminating in 2012. Employees from throughout the organization contributed ideas for special sections, sponsored advertising, educational projects and community activities revolving around the leaders, citizens and characters behind the fascinating history of the state, as detailed in the pages of the newspaper throughout the past 100 years.

• The Lee sales organization for energetic and effective execution of a highly successful one-day sales challenge. Across Lee, the one-day tally of new sales totaled $4.96 million, far exceeding the goal of $1.9 million. Worthy of special mention for leading performances are the Lincoln Journal Star in Lincoln, Neb.; the Napa Valley Register in Napa, Calif.; The Daily Herald in Provo, Utah; the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa; and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, Mo.

The judges awarded a high honorable mention to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Madison Newspapers Inc. for launching iPad applications. The St. Louis app has been downloaded more than 16,000 times since February. The Madison app launched in May and has become a model for other markets in Lee.

Judges for the innovation category were Brad Harmon, vice president of sales and marketing at GateHouse Media, Inc.; Barbara Cohen, president and founder of Kannon Consulting; and Herbert W. Moloney III, an independent director of Lee and longtime advertising and publishing executive.

EXCEPTIONAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

The Lee President's Award for Exceptional Achievement recognizes outstanding leadership, collaboration and execution benefiting all of Lee. The 2011 award is shared by the digital development staffs at Madison Newspapers Inc. in Wisconsin, along with developers in the Lee corporate staff, for creating seamless platforms for delivering news and advertising to mobile audiences.

The resulting latest-generation mobile applications are tightly integrated with news and advertising content management systems and have been deployed across the company, helping drive rapid audience growth. Mobile page views in Lee grew to 22.6 million in September 2011, representing a year-over-year increase of 231 percent.

The citation gives special recognition to Tim Kelley, William Bagayoko, Joshua Pokotilow, Daniel Roose and Brent Theisen of Madison Newspapers Inc., and Mark Bullard, Lori Jonasson and Jason Larson of the Lee corporate staff. Lee jointly owns Madison Newspapers Inc., which publishes the Wisconsin State Journal.

LEE SPIRIT

The Lee Spirit Award recognizes outstanding personal commitment to our company and the people we serve.

The top award is being shared this year by a group of staff members at the Lincoln Journal Star in Lincoln, Neb., who responded to the aid of a colleague who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. It is a progressive degeneration of nerve cells that control muscle movement.

The colleague is William Lauer, whose 15 years as a Journal Star photographer ended a year ago. The group began by helping him with alterations to his house and the re-landscaping of his yard. Then their work took on a larger scope. They organized a charitable foundation and so far have raised tens of thousands of dollars to assist not only their colleague but also others suffering from the condition. Cited for special recognition in leading the effort are Ken Hambleton, Mary Weixelman, Ted Kirk and Catharine Huddle, as well as and William Lauer himself. Dozens of other employees have been involved. Details

Across Lee, dozens of other individuals and groups are being honored locally as Lee Spirit finalists. Details

Lee Enterprises is a leading provider of local news and information, and a leading platform for advertising, in its markets, with 48 daily newspapers and a joint interest in four others, rapidly growing digital products and nearly 300 specialty publications in 23 states. Lee's newspapers have circulation of 1.4 million daily and 1.7 million Sunday, reaching nearly four million readers in print alone. Lee's digital sites attracted 21.6 million unique visitors in September 2011. Lee Common Stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LEE. For more information about Lee, please visit www.lee.net.

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