Gazette’s national award win is a total team effort

The Hammonton Gazette earns honorable mention on national “Top 10 Publishers” list. (Courtesy Photo)

You’re reading this right now, so I will extend many thanks for your role in The Gazette receiving a national award in the form of one of only 11 honorable mentions following the list of “Top 10 Publishers Who Do It Right” as selected by Editor & Publisher Magazine from entries submitted from throughout the country. (To view the article about the “Top 10” and the honorable mentions, visit editorandpublisher.com)

Without readers like you, our advertisers and our staff, we would not have received this prestigious award. The Gazette—and Hammonton—are in some excellent company. Award winners include some of the top newspapers and media companies in the United States.

We are honored to be included with them in this, the year of The Gazette’s 25th anniversary.

Let me take a moment to thank some people. If you’ve been with us the entire 25 years—and I know many of you have—these names will be very familiar to you. If this is the first time you’re reading The Gazette, these are the people who made Hammonton’s local paper a nationally-recognized newspaper.

Gazette Editor-in-Chief Gina Rullo and Sports Editor Dan Russoman have both been with the paper for 25 years. Lead Graphic Designer MarySusan Hoffman has been here 14 years. Staff members Kristin Guglietti (Copy Editor, Social Media Manager and Staff Writer), Sean Friel (Staff Writer) and Joseph F. Berenato (Staff Writer and Columnist), Donna Brown (Columnist) and Betsey Karl (Photographer) have made outstanding contributions to the paper as well.

Our editorial contributors include: Dan Bachalis (Columnist); Cherie Calletta (Columnist); Rocco DeLaurentis (Columnist); Michael Donio (Columnist); Maria Drzaszcz (Columnist); Bob Garver (Movie Critic); Lorraine Griffiths (Columnist); Kurt Loder (Movie Critic); Jim Miller, Columnist; Dr. Ron Newman (Columnist); and Jim Siwek (Columnist).

The Gazette won this award because of the consistently excellent work of the people listed above this paragraph. Again, if you’ve been reading this newspaper since 1997, you know we’ve expanded and grown in print, digital and other avenues. If this is the first time you’ve picked up The Gazette, here is an overview of what made us nationally-recognized when the Editor & Publisher awards were announced on March 1:

The print edition has a number of sections: News; Opinion; Business & Finance; Our Town; Education; Neighbors; Noticias; Arts & Entertainment; Health & Fitness; Cuisine; Home & Family; Antiques and Sports. We also have a Comics section. Each week we usually present a special supplement, ranging from excerpts from books on local history, like this week, to spring and fall Bride & Groom guides, to our annual Dining Guide and many other special supplements.

We have an excellent website (hammontongazette.com); we give out Hammy Awards in our annual anniversary edition on the first week in July; we have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for The Gazette; we do social media management and build websites for customers; in January we launched The Hammontonian Magazine, our 24-page in-paper separate magazine section; we have four YouTube shows: “Gazette Sports Week” hosted by Russoman and “Gazette News Briefs” hosted by myself are weekly, with “Gazette High School Football Report” hosted by Russoman and Dave Birnbaum weekly during the football season. “Gazette In Fashion,” hosted by Franki Rudnesky, is monthly (view them all at hammontongazette.com) and “Blueberry Skies,” hosted by Joseph F. Berenato, is available on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Mondays and Fridays.

Gazette Print Shop is our print division, enabling us to meet the needs of our customers who want anything printed, from menus to shirts to banners and thousands of other products. Visit hammontonshops.com to see our main product lines.

As you can see, The Gazette has evolved and grown during the last quarter-century, thanks to the consistent support of our readers, our advertisers and our staff. We are proud to have received this honorable mention and national recognition for our work from Editor & Publisher Magazine, and we thank them for the honor, which not only belongs to us, but the entire town of Hammonton.

It’s been my honor to start and help build—with an excellent team—a business in my hometown.

Thank you, Hammonton.

There wouldn’t be a Hammonton Gazette without you.

Gabriel J. Donio is the publisher of The Hammonton Gazette.