Editors honored by state group

The Arkansas Press Association honored Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editors Danny Shameer and Bill Simmons with service awards at its 2012 SuperConvention in downtown Little Rock.

Shameer was awarded the Freedom of Information Award and Simmons was awarded the Golden 50 Service Award, said Tom Larimer, executive director of the association. The four-day convention ends today.

“I think they’re excellent choices,” Larimer said. “For Danny Shameer, it wasn’t for any one thing he might have done, but for his body of work,” including his involvement in the Freedom of Information Coalition.

Larimer said Simmons has been in the news business for more than 50 years and the award is “certainly long overdue.”

Shameer, state editor since 2008, said he began working at the newspaper in 1988 as a general assignment reporter, moving on to education and Little Rock City Hall.

Since that time, Shameer, 54, said he’s used the Freedom of Information Act for “everything under the sun.”

“The more we use the FOI, the better we become at casting a wide net,” Shameer said. “Students and journalists new to Arkansas should learn the basics of the FOI because it’s really a great tool that becomes a part of reporting.”

Debra Hale-Shelton, a reporter Shameer supervises, used the state Freedom of Information Act extensively to expose a secret bonus paid to former University of Central Arkansas PresidentLu Hardin and a deal with a UCA food vendor to pay for remodeling UCA President Allen Meadors’ universityowned home in exchange for a contract extension.

Simmons, political editor since 1996, said that throughout his career in the news business, he’s seen it all, from the execution of mass murderer R. Gene Simmons in 1990 to the fun and drama that goes along with the “rising and falling” of politicians.

Simmons, 70, said his first job in the news business was a paper-stuffer for the Arkansas Democrat when he was 13 or 14. He was hired at the Arkansas Gazette in 1958 as a copy boy while still in high school, moving up to a sports reporter a year later. Simmons also worked for The Associated Press in Little Rock and Detroit for 34 years.

For new reporters, Simmons said his advice is to always “work hard.”

“Remember most of the people you deal with are smarter than you,” Simmons said. “Remember what [Star Trek’s] Spock said, ‘There are always possibilities.’”