DURHAM, NC (July 23) – Denny Simmons of the Evansville Courier & Press has been appointed the new Monthly News Clip Contest (MNCC) national chairperson by National Press Photographers Association president Bob Carey.
"I am excited about Denny agreeing to take this position and believe he has a tremendous vision for the monthly contest," Carey said when making the annoucement.
"Since the move to an online contest at the beginning of the year, we have a greater presence for members and non-members and I believe that Denny is the right person to take us to the next level and provide members with a significant benefit."
Carey also said that NPPA staff member and Best Of Photojournalism competition coordinator Thomas Kenniff will "work hand-in-hand with Simmons to coordinate the Monthly News Clip Contest in a way similar to how he coordinates NPPA's annual Best Of Photojournalism committee. I believe this combination will only enhance the contest experience for our membership."
The MNCC's new national chair is an award-winning photojournalist who is also NPPA's Director of Region 4. He's the winner of the 2008 Best Of Photojournalism competition's Photojournalist of the Year (Smaller Markets) title. Before Evansville, Simmons was a picture editor at the Waukegan Sun and at the St. Joseph News-Press, and a staff photographer at the Jacksonville Journal-Courier. He was named Region 4 Photographer of the Year twice and Indiana Photographer of the Year once.
Simmons studied photojournalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where as a senior he was named College Photographer of the Year in 1993 and completed an internship at National Geographic magazine.
NPPA'S MNCC "went digital" in January 2008 with photographers entering their images via the Web, judges picking winners in online galleries, and winners being displayed online on the NPPA Web site. The new online format brings the MNCC into the digital world but also makes the contest easier, faster, and makes the photographs available to viewers, including students and educators, in a rapid way that the contest in its old format could never hope to achieve.
The move to getting the MNCC online was one of NPPA president Tony Overman's top priorities during his tenure on the organization's executive committee.
