New Vineyard Gazette owner looking for a new publisher; several... More. 
 
 Boston Globe The sale to Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg -- he's retired from investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. -- includes $2 million for the newspaper business and $1.5 million for the Gazette's real estate. Richard Reston , son of former New York Times columnist James Reston , has been the paper's publisher since 1988 and is retiring. 
 
 Romenesko Memos Peter Wallsten 's "instinct for discovering hidden gems and talking to the untalked-to will help on a highly competitive beat where ingenuity and resourcefulness are in demand," says a Post memo announcing the hire. 
 
 The California Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to review lower-court rulings ordering SF Weekly to pay $21 million in damages for trying to drive the rival Bay Guardian out of business by selling ads below cost. || More at altweeklies.com. 
 
 Romenesko Misc. 
 
 "Andrea Mitchell is a great reporter and commentator who regularly breaks important Washington and national stories," say the judges. She's asked that the University of Pennsylvania receive the $5,000 honorarium associated with the Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. 
 
 Posted at 11:43 AM on Nov. 24, 2010 ||||| LOWELL THOMAS TRAVEL JOURNALISM COMPETITION 
 
 28 Years of Rewarding Journalists for Outstanding Work in the Field 
 
 
 
 
 
 2010 Lowell Thomas Winners 
 
 
 
 Afar Magazine, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle 
 
 Earn 2010 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Honors 
 
 SATW Foundation president David Molyneaux, right, and Foundation administrator Mary Lu Abbott, left, congratulate Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award winners Spud Hilton, Kit Bernardi representing Midwest Living magazine and Laura Del Rosso. 
 
 Afar, a new magazine, and the venerable Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle win top honors as the best travel publications in North America in the 2010 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. 
 
 Among other winners, Outside magazine wins seven individual awards, Islands magazine, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times four and the New York Times, Afar and National Geographic Traveler three. 
 
 BudgetTravel.com wins gold for the best online travel journalism site. 
 
 Travel Journalist of the Year is Andrew McCarthy, who won the gold for his freelance writing in some of North America’s best travel magazines. 
 
 This is the 26th year of the annual Lowell Thomas competition, overseen by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. The awards, recognized as the most prestigious in the field, were announced in Leipzig, Germany, at the annual convention of the Society of American Travel Writers, the professional organization of travel journalists and communicators. 
 
 The competition, for work from spring 2009 to spring 2010, drew 1,161 entries. Judging was done by faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Foundation awards more than $20,000 in prize money to winners. 
 
 See the full story about this year’s results. 
 
 Individual Award Winners: 
 
 With articles in National Geographic Traveler, Bon Appétit, Islands, Afar and other magazines, actor-writer Andrew McCarthy took the top individual honors as 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year in the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. 
 
 The Washington Post asked 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year: 
 
 "If you could win only one award in your lifetime, which one would it be: an Emmy, Oscar, Razzie or Lowell Thomas?" 
 
 Andrew McCarthy: 
 
 'I'll take them all.' (Read the entire story...CLICK HERE) 
 
 
 
 
 
 “Word by word, paragraph by paragraph, entry by entry, McCarthy earns the gold the old-fashioned way — by treating readers to excellent writing and poignant stories,” said the judge. McCarthy’s subjects were wide ranging, from a wilderness trip that turned deadly to a search for the best soda bread recipe in Ireland. 
 
 Silver winner in the Grand Award category is Catharine Hamm, travel editor of the Los Angeles Times, who also takes bronze in investigative reporting. The bronze in Grand Award goes to Gary Stoller, a reporter at USA Today who also wins gold for investigative reporting on airline maintenance failures. 
 
 In Special Packages/Projects, which recognizes in-depth coverage of a topic and emphasizes use of multiple, interactive media, the gold goes to Jill Schensul for “Namibia” in The Record and northjersey.com of Hackensack, N.J. 
 
 Rick Steves earns top honors for the best travel book with “Travel as a Political Act,” in which he shares experiences of more than 30 years exploring the world. Ben Mutzabaugh wins gold for the best travel blog, Today in the Sky, at USAToday.com. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Check out the complete list of winners: 
 
 
 
 What the Judges Said: 
 
 The competition, for work from spring 2009 to spring 2010, drew 1,161 entries. Faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication did judging. 
 
 “The entries were a breath of fresh air,” said Winston Cavin, coordinating judge at the university. “Unfazed by the economy, writers focused on budget-conscious family ideas along with the traditional fare of glitz and faraway places. Travel journalists became twice as productive, twice as clever, and their work as enjoyable as ever." 
 
 Afar, winner of the gold award as best travel magazine, is based in San Francisco and debuted in the summer of 2009. The magazine “presents a stunning mix of standing features (travel with a purpose, unusual places to stay) and stories on truly different topics (bog snorkeling in Wales?) from all over the world,” said the judge. 
 
 And for BudgetTravel.com, the top winner in online travel journalism sites, the judge said: “Amid a wide variety of travel sites, Budget Travel stands out for its quality of information, layout, design and navigation and its community.” 
 
 See the judges’ comments about all winners. 
 
 The Prizes for Winners: 
 
 The total prize money for individual winners this year was $20,600. The Grand Award earns the gold winner $1,500, the silver winner $750 and the bronze place $500. In individual categories, first-place gold winners each receive $500. Silver and bronze winners receive $250 and $150. The categories for Best Newspaper Travel Sections, Best Magazines, Best Online Travel Journalism Sites and Best Travel Packages/Projects are not given monetary awards. 
 
 The 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year receives an engraved crystal award. The other two Grand Award honors and all other gold winners are given engraved plaques, while silver and bronze honorees receive certificates mounted on plaques. 
 
 The awards are named for Lowell Thomas, acclaimed broadcast journalist, prolific author and world explorer during five decades in travel journalism. ||||| Image credit: Seamus Murphy/VII Network 
 
 “It’s the worst we’ve seen in our lifetime. And there’s absolutely no hope for the future,” my mother-in-law told me recently. “Everyone is frightened, we just don’t know where to turn.” She was, of course, referring to the great Irish economic meltdown, now firmly entrenched in its third year. Her tremulous voice was thick with the famous Irish doom and gloom, but there was truth in her words. 
 
 In the ’90s and early ’00s, double-digit economic growth made Ireland the European Union’s poster child for success. Dublin exploded from a sleepy backwater to a city boasting some of the most expensive real estate in Europe. And then it all ended. To quote a friend, “The party’s over and the hangover is feckin’ brutal.” My own home in the city lost half its value, seemingly overnight. But Ireland is more than just Dublin, and out in the picture-postcard west, where the rising tide never raised all boats, rural life was, and remains, dependent on the harvest and livestock. And so I decided to head out and see just how the recession was weighing on the Irish spirit far from the city lights. 
 
 
 
 Slideshow: Andrew McCarthy describes Doolin’s otherworldly landscape and music scene (Photos by Seamus Murphy) 
 
 I first arrived in Doolin, in County Clare, 25 years ago. A village of several hundred, strewn over a few miles on one main road, Doolin unfolds along a winding track that rises over a stone bridge, runs past two of the three pubs that anchor the town, dips into a swale, climbs over another bridge, works itself up a hill past a few shops and Gus O’Connor’s Pub, and then rolls down to the sea, where ferries ply the route to the Aran Islands. To the south, the coastline rises up into the Cliffs of Moher, 700 sheer feet of splendor above the Atlantic. Whitewashed houses with thatched roofs oversee sheep grazing across deep-green fields enclosed by crumbling stone walls that have stood for centuries. You can practically hear them singing “How are things in Glocca Morra?”—except that in Doolin, you’re more likely to catch the sounds of searing fiddles, rising flutes, and thumping bodhrán drums. The village has long been the epicenter of the traditional Irish music scene, and thanks largely to the success of Riverdance more than a decade ago, “trad” music is in the midst of a renaissance. On most every night, in any of Doolin’s three pubs, young musicians sit in, side by side with old, tearing into reels, jigs, and laments. The music may not have exempted Doolin from the recession, but it’s kept the place buzzing. “The people are still out and about, they’re just spending a lot less,” Orla McGovern tells me from behind the counter of her aptly named Traditional Music Shop on Fisher Street. 
 
 Late in the evening, I squeeze onto a stool at a packed McDermott’s Pub and recognize Geraldine MacGowan—one of Doolin’s local heroes and an international trad star—sitting in with the boys. She’s hard to miss, with her head of thick red hair and her wicked smile. She keeps time on the bodhrán and nods greetings to patrons as she plays. Eventually, she takes the microphone and sings a mournful ballad of loss and regret and fear. The locals nod with understanding. 
 
 At a break, Dolores Rice, a Dubliner down for the music and banter—the craic—explains, “Instilling fear is a Catholic tradition in Ireland. It’s something we’re very comfortable with. You can almost hear the priest say, ‘You thought you’d get away with your money grab, but the devil gets you in the end. You can’t sin without being punished.’” She looks around the crowded pub. “But we’re happy now, our most fatal certainty has been realized.” The Irish may have stopped going to church in large numbers, but it’s impossible to get the church out of the people. 
 
 Outside, a light rain’s begun. I make my way over the stone bridge and past McGann’s Pub. The band inside is slashing into a reel, and I stand under the glow of the lone streetlamp, listening. The music burns to a crescendo and then breaks hard. There’s a moment of absolute silence in the countryside, and then it’s shattered as the crowd inside erupts. In Ireland, the day may have written checks the night can’t cash, but out here in Doolin, on this night at least, the credit’s still good. 
 
 Andrew McCarthy is a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler and an actor. He lives in New York and Dublin.
– The year's top travel writer is a familiar face, but more so for acting than writing. Andrew McCarthy of Brat Pack fame (yes, Molly Ringwald's true love in Pretty in Pink) has won the 2010 Lowell Thomas award for Travel Journalist of the Year, notes Jim Romenesko's blog at PoynterOnline. McCarthy's freelance articles have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Bon Appetit, Afar, and the Atlantic, among others. (His piece on Ireland in the latter is here.) "Word by word, paragraph-by-paragraph, entry-by-entry, McCarthy earns the gold the old-fashioned way—by treating readers to excellent writing and poignant stories," declared the judges.