Colin Woodard, state and national affairs reporter for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, has won a prestigious national award for his report on the influence of for-profit online education companies on the Maine Department of Education.

Woodard is the winner of the 2012 George Polk Award for Education Reporting for “The profit motive behind virtual schools in Maine,” a two-part report published in the Telegram on Sept. 2. His stories revealed how two out-of-state companies were shaping the state’s policies on digital education as it moved to establish its first charter schools. His work also showed how the companies’ schools in other states have fared poorly in studies of students’ achievement.

It is the second Polk award in as many years for a Maine Press Association member. The Advertiser Democrat of Norway won for its report in October 2011 on poor living conditions in low-income housing in western Maine. The three-month investigation by Editor A.M. Sheehan and Assistant Editor Matt Hongoltz-Hetling exposed dismal living conditions for some residents who got Section 8 assistance in Norway and neighboring Paris.

Polk awards are among journalism’s top honors. Besides Woodard, others to be recognized for work completed in 2012 include David Corn, Washington bureau chief for the Mother Jones news organization; reporters for The New York Times and Bloomberg News who uncovered high-level corruption in China; journalists for McClatchy Newspapers and GlobalPost who covered the civil war in Syria; and staffers with CBS News, The New Yorker, The Washington Post and PBS’ “Frontline.”

The awards will be presented April 11 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein will be the citation readers. Read the story in the Press Herald.

Responding to a challenge from the Portland Press Herald, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court issued a ruling Jan. 24 that ended secret jury selection for the trial of Mark Strong Sr. in the Kennebunk prostitution case.

The Press Herald filed a motion with the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of Justice Nancy Mills’ decision to close the proceedings to the public. Mills had said she feared that prospective jurors would not be candid if they were questioned publicly in York County Superior Court.

On Jan. 24, the Supreme Court ordered Mills to stop the closed-door jury selection, open the rest of the process to the public and release transcripts of the sessions that began Jan. 22.

The ruling “may change the way jury selection is done” to ensure that it is transparent, said the Press Herald’s lawyer, Sigmund Schutz of Preti Flaherty.

“This is a precedent-setting decision,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s a practice that’s ever been challenged before.”

Read the story in the Press Herald.

Mary Brewer, who joined the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame in October, will be honored again for her career spanning more than 50 years at the Boothbay Register. In an induction ceremony Feb. 8 in Boston, Brewer will become a member of the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame.

Brewer joined the Register as a summer intern soon after her first year at the University of Maine, and began working there full-time after graduating from the Katharine Gibbs school in Boston. She was named editor in 1962 and held the job until she retired last year. She was president of the MPA in 1982-83 and was Maine Journalist of the Year in 1984.

In announcing her induction, the New England Newspaper & Press Association said “she demonstrated the finest characteristics of our profession: integrity, honesty, courage, hard work, and just plain common sense.”

Brewer will be inducted along with Peter Caruso Sr., one of New England’s top media lawyers; Thomas Heslin, executive editor of the Providence Journal; Morgan McGinley, who was editorial page editor of The Day in New London, Conn., for 25 years; Mary Pat Rowland, managing editor at Foster’s Daily Democrat in Dover, N.H.; and the late Peter Watson, who was editor of the Gloucester Daily Times in Massachusetts.

The event is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Feb. 8 at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. You can call  NENPA at (781) 320-8042 or email info@nenpa.com for more information.

Maine is also represented in the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame by Alan Baker and J. Russell Wiggins of The Ellsworth American, Robert Bissonnette and Alexander Bacon “Sandy” Brook of the York County Coast Star, Paul Dietterle Jr. of the Sanford News, Winnifred French of The Quoddy Tides, Ray Gross of The Courier-Gazette and Sam Roberts of The Lincoln County News.

Wiggins, Brook, Gross and Roberts are in the MPA Hall of Fame.

Three of Maine’s oldest and best known weekly newspapers have rejoined the Maine Press Association, under new ownership.

The Courier-Gazette in Rockland, The Camden Herald and The Republican Journal in Belfast joined at the start of the new year. The papers have been owned since March by Reade Brower, who bought them after their previous owner shut down early last year.

The Republican Journal was founded in 1829, The Courier-Gazette started in 1846 and The Camden Herald opened in 1869. Village NetMedia bought the newspapers from Courier Publications in 2008. It closed the papers when it ceased operations in March of last year.

Before the shutdown, the Rockland and Camden papers operated as the VillageSoup Gazette and the Belfast paper was the VillageSoup Journal. Both dropped out of the MPA before they closed. Brower restored the old titles, and now has made them MPA members again.

The Republican Journal won Newspaper of the Year awards from the MPA in 1997 and 2005. The Camden Herald won those honors in 2001 and 2002.

Anthony Ronzio, who has been the new media director for Sun Media Group in Lewiston, will become director of news and new media for the Bangor Daily News in mid-January.

Ronzio, the current treasurer and a past president of the Maine Press Association, will take the position in Bangor held previously by Todd Benoit, who recently was promoted to vice president and chief operating officer for the BDN. Ronzio will oversee day-to-day newsroom operations and guide the long-term development of the Bangor Daily News as it expands its ability to provide news coverage across multiple formats, Benoit said in a story on the newspaper’s website.

“Tony is an excellent journalist and a superb newsroom leader who knows Maine well,” Benoit said. “We’re especially excited about his work on digital products, and know he will be a major asset to the BDN.”

Ronzio served in the past as chief executive of the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, as editorial page editor of the Sun Journal and as assistant editor of VillageSoup when the digital-first, community-news website began in Maine’s midcoast region. He said, “I’m excited to join the talented staff of the BDN and look forward to bringing our readers the best journalism in Maine, regardless of which platform they use to access it.”

Read the story in the Bangor Daily News.

The MPA is taking steps to make membership more affordable for all Maine newspapers.

The association’s Board of Directors voted in November to reduce dues by $50 for every member paper in 2013, then spend the coming months considering a new dues structure to propose at the Fall Conference in October.

The MPA, whose new fiscal year will start Jan. 1, is now preparing invoices based on members’ local open ad rates, which have been the basis for membership dues since the mid-1990s. The total for each paper will automatically be reduced by $50. Invoices will be mailed out by the end of December.

Starting in January, the board will use members’ circulation numbers to consider new formulas that make membership dues as equitable and inexpensive as possible while supporting the MPA’s services for members and advocacy for the state’s newspaper industry. If you have ideas for a new dues structure, contact the MPA at mainepressmail@gmail.com.

Planning has begun already for the 2013 Better Newspaper Contest, so the MPA is seeking members’ suggestions for improvements.

Each year, a contest committee evaluates what is working well and what should be changed to keep the competition sharp and the categories up to date.

For 2013, the committee plans in particular to review categories for online entries, to ensure they reflect the work that MPA members are publishing today on the Internet. The committee will meet in the coming weeks and propose changes to the MPA board in early 2013.

If you have a suggestion, or if you’re interested in serving on the contest committee, contact the MPA at mainepressmail@gmail.com and this year’s contest chair, Troy Bennett, at tbennett@bangordailynews.com.

The Maine Press Association is preparing for a critical legislative session with a new attorney to represent Maine’s newspaper industry in the State House.

Michael Mahoney of Augusta-based Federle Mahoney joined with the MPA on Nov. 1. He represented the MPA and the Maine Daily Newspapers Publishers Association very effectively from 2002 to 2006, working on right-to-know reform and the successful effort to keep public notices in newspapers, among other issues.

Mahoney practiced law in Boston before joining Preti Flaherty in Portland in 2000, focusing on governmental relations and lobbying before the Legislature. In January 2007, he was named chief legal counsel to Gov. John Baldacci. In September 2008, Mahoney left the governor’s office to form Federle Mahoney along with Tom Federle, another former legal counsel to Baldacci.

Mahoney will offer brief advice for MPA members who have questions regarding libel issues or Maine’s Freedom of Access law. He can be contacted at 620-7020 or at mike@federlemahoney.com.

Members should no longer seek such advice from Preti Flaherty, whose contract with the MPA has ended. In making the change, the MPA thanked Preti Flaherty for its invaluable service over the last decade.

A newspaper veteran with more than 40 years of experience has joined The Times Record as publisher and advertising director.

Larry Hubner, 58, worked for his hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, at 14, handing out newspapers to carriers at a distribution center. “I was making $38 every other week,” he said.

The past five years, he has worked as a regional publisher and advertising director for MediaNews – one of the largest U.S. newspaper organizations – most recently in Fitchburg, Mass. He has also owned a small weekly newspaper in Wisconsin, served as general manager at a television guide on the island of Guam, and as executive editor for weekly publications in White Bear Lake, Minn.

“I’m absolutely delighted to join the staff of The Times Record, and I’m looking forward to becoming involved in the advertising side of our business, and within the community. I have already met a number of our local merchants and I’ve been very impressed by their collective marketing knowledge and retail operations,” he said.

Hubner holds an MBA from Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minn., a master’s in diplomacy from Norwich University in Vermont, and a bachelor’s from the University of Maryland.

He will be joined by his wife, Magda, a nurse and native of the Czech Republic who received her U.S. citizenship this summer. Hubner’s interests include tennis, history and his 5-year-old rottweiler, Riley.