Three named to Newspaper Hall of Fame

Posted March 1, 2019

TOPEKA — Three long-time journalists were honored as the 2019 inductees into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame Friday night here at the annual convention of the Kansas Press Association.

They included:

• Rosalie Ross, founder and now co-editor of the Rawlins County Square Deal in Atwood.

• Ned Valentine, editor and publisher of the Clay Center Dispatch.

• Doug Anstaett, former Newton Kansan publisher who retired as executive director of the Kansas Press Association in 2018.

Ross began her newspaper career at her high school newspaper in St. Francis and then at her Phillips University newspaper in Oklahoma.

After she and her military service husband raised their family, she served in various capacities between 1980 and 1992 at the Citizen Patriot in Atwood, including two years as publisher, before embarking on a new adventure.

She and her husband and two other couples formed a corporation and established a new newspaper in Atwood, the Square Deal.

Ross served for 21 years as publisher before selling the newspaper to Lloyd and Susan Huff, who she has mentored the past five years.

She was presented the Gaston Outstanding Mentor Award in 2005.

Harry E. (Ned) Valentine is in his 50th year managing the daily Clay Center Dispatch, a newspaper in the Valentine family since 1882.

He is a graduate of the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.

He and three other Valentines — great uncle Del Valentine, grandfather Lou Valentine, and father Harry E. Valentine — have served in leadership capacities with KPA during their careers.

He is a member and past president of the William Allen White Foundation Board of Trustees and has been active through the years with the local Chamber of Commerce and another economic development group and served on the Associated Press Managing Editors Freedom of Information Committee in the 1970s.

Anstaett is a 1973 journalism and mass communications graduate of Kansas State University from Lyndon.

His journalism career has spanned 45 years. He was a reporter or editor at newspapers in Pittsburg, Topeka and Nevada, Mo., before entering management training in 1979 in the Grand Island (Neb.) Daily Independent.

Two years later, he was named editor and publisher of the Brookings (S.D.) Register. After five years there, he transferred back to Kansas to lead the Newton Kansan from 1987 to 2003.

He won four first place awards in the Inland Press Association’s William Allen White Editorial Excellence contest, one while in Brookings and three while in Newton. One of those Newton awards also was the overall Inland sweepstakes award winner in 1992.

From 2004 to 2018, he served as executive director of KPA. He now serves as a part-time consultant and lobbyist for the association.

At the same meeting, other major awards were presented for outstanding journalism, community service and mentoring.

Dena Sattler, former editor/publisher of the Garden City Telegram, was presented the Clyde M. Reed Jr. Master Editor Award.

Sattler served as editor-publisher of the Garden City Telegram from 2004 to 2018, and in 2018 was named southwest Kansas group publisher for GateHouse Media, serving as publisher of The Telegram and four other newspapers.

She’s now an editorial writer for The Topeka Capital-Journal and other GateHouse Media papers in Kansas.

On Sattler’s watch, The Telegram collected multiple Kansas Press Association Awards of Excellence Sweepstakes honors in news and advertising competitions for top medium-sized newspapers in the state.

She also has won several state and national honors for editorial writing, including first-place awards in Inland Press Association and National Newspaper Association competitions, and was named a GateHouse Media Editorial Writer of the Year.

The Boyd Community Service Award went to the Wichita Eagle for its community effort to improve literacy with its #ReadICT Project.

Withhelp from the not-for-profit Wichita Community Foundation, the staff launched the #ReadICT Challenge, in partnership with the Wichita Public Library – a year-long, 12-book reading challenge geared toward readers of all ages.

The Eagle produced a handy printablechecklist of the challenge to help participants track their reading.

The Victor Murdock Award for outstanding journalism went to the Kansas City Star for its series of articles titled "Why So Secret, Kansas?"

The Star was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the public service category for the series.

The Star devoted considerable people power and space in late 2017 to an investigative series about the lack of transparency in Kansas government. The Star's reporters dug into a number of legislative and executive branch rules and practices that buried the public's business behind a wall of secrecy.

The Gaston Outstanding Mentor Award went to Bob Johnson, who has worked at the Iola Register for 54 years and still covers stories and writes columns and editorials for the Register.