A couple well-known in Lexington as a former Herald-Leader columnist and a scholar of folk art have been selected as this year’s winner of The Al Smith Award by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications.
Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery ran a rural newspaper outside Austin, Texas in Smithville, before settling in Lexington in the 80s, where Bishop was a member of the Lexington Herald-Leader’s editorial board and a columnist and where Ardery pursued her Ph.D. in sociology, focusing on rural or “outsider” artists and the folk art economy. Since then, the two, who now live in La Grange, Texas, co-founded “The Daily Yonder,” the online news site for the Center For Rural Strategies. Both Bishop and Ardery are originally from Louisville.
The award, which goes to a Kentuckian who has had significant impact on community journalism, honors Al Smith, the founder and longtime host of “Comment on Kentucky” on KET. For more about other awards from the Institute that is directed by Louisville Courier-Journal vet Prof. Al Cross and for information about the fundraising awards dinner, hop over to UKNow.
http://uknow.uky.edu/content/kentuckians-win-top-awards-institute-rural-journalism-and-community-issues