Member News: Northwest Territories editor receives Mazza scholarship

– from the ISWNE newsletter, June 2010

Bruce Valpy, managing editor of Northern News Services Ltd. (NNSL) in the Northwest Territories of Canada, is the recipient of ISWNE’s Brian Mazza Memorial Scholarship for 2010. Valpy will attend ISWNE’s annual conference in Richmond, Ky., June 23-27.
Mazza, editor of The Mountaineer in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, served as ISWNE president in 1994-95 and twice hosted the Society’s annual conference. He died in March 2007 at the age of 45. The Mazza family contributed $10,000 for the creation of an endowment, where the interest pays for a Canadian editor to attend the annual conference.
Valpy started out in the newspaper industry as a copy boy at the Windsor Star in 1978. Fate led him to Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, in 1981 where he was introduced to the advertising end of the weekly newspaper industry by Jack Sigvaldason, who owned NNSL and two weekly newspapers ? Yellowknifer and News North. It was a short stint in the ad business, but after several years dabbling in reporting for an aboriginal newspaper, theater and creative writing, Valpy returned to NNSL in 1989 as a production editor.
Twenty-one years later, Valpy is managing editor and Northern News Services partners Sigvaldason (publisher) and Mike Scott (general manager) have added four more weekly newspapers to their stable, covering the NWT and Nunavut, the top third of Canada.
Valpy and NNSL editorial policy demand that people and pictures be front and center in every story. Beyond that, the reader deserves to be entertained and informed.

“Accuracy is the gold standard,” he said. “Sacred cows must be scrutinized, challenged and upon occasion slaughtered, just as credit should be freely given when deserved. Typos are unforgivable and must be rectified by full and rapid correction. Long established credibility lives or dies on the next story.
“Lastly, the power of the weekly community newspaper industry is just now being felt as the would-be giants of journalism struggle to redefine themselves in a cluttered field of competitors. Weekly newspapers collectively are the true giant of journalism, as humble as we may be.”