Oct. 29: NCPA/NCPS Board of Directors meeting

Nov. 4-6: Classified Advertising Conference and the Circulation/ Distribution Conference at Myrtle Beach, S.C.

March 14-20, 2010: Sunshine Week

March 18, 2010: NCPA Winter Institute at the Dean Dome, Chapel Hill

Contest entries being processed
More than 4,000 entries came in this year for the News, Editorial & Photojournalism Contest. Right now we are in the midst of sorting through all of them, entering them into our system and getting them ready for delivery to our judges. The process does take a lot of time, but it will be completed in plenty of time.

About the contest in 2010…
NCPA has been discussing a major transformation in the news contest, one dealing with how you submit entries. While nothing is concrete at this point, we do want to give you a heads up so you can start preparing now. The plan involves members submitting all entries via the Internet instead of hard copies delivered to our office. Again, nothing has been formally decided, but now would be a good time to consider how you store and archive electronic files of your newspaper. Watch for more information.

• George Summerlin, 73, former publisher of The Mount Airy News, died Oct. 17 in Morehead City.
• Hal Tanner III, general manager of The Goldsboro News-Argus, was elected to a three-year term on the board of Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.

Got news of North Carolina newspaper people? Be sure to send it to us at john@ncpress.com. Oh, and be sure to include a mugshot with the item.

• Media outlets, even some governments are using new Transparency site to get information

• Wisconsin daily drops one day for online only edition
• Parade magazine, which appears in many N.C. newspapers, gets a new publisher
• Massachusetts city's police department trying to shut out local newspaper
• Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson issue a report on their ideas of The Reconstruction of American Journalism
• NNA commends Postmaster General Jack Potter for holding the line on increases

• KEVIN SLIMP: Here are a couple of ideas for your Web site
• MAC SLOCUM: What a literary magazine could teach news organizations about the iPhone
• JILL GEISLER: What great bosses know about staying calm in a crisis
• KEN SANDS: High cost, low quality plague newspapers' video efforts