Arizona Community Journalist of the Year

Marley Shebala, Navajo Times

    Marley Shebala, 54, who is Dine’ (Navajo) and A:shiwi (Zuni), is To'aheedliinii (The Water Flow Together clan) and born for Naasht’ezhi (Zuni). Her Zuni clan is Frog. She is also the senior news reporter for the Navajo Times.

    Shebala, who has 22 years of journalism experience, is the Native American Journalists Association Board vice president  and a UC-Boulder Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism Board member. In 2003, she received a Hewellet Environmental Fellowship to teach environmental journalism at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She brought her students to the Navajo and Hopi reservations where they produced a special report on Peabody Coal Company’s use of the Navajo Aquifer to slurry coal to the Mohave Generating Station.

    As the first news director of KTNN, the Navajo Nation’s 50,000 watt AM radio station, Shebala refused to censor her news stories about then Chairman Peter MacDonald shutting down the Navajo Times, which resulted in MacDonald having her placed on “indefinite leave without pay” in 1986. She eventually returned to work at KTNN, where her position as news director was not funded a year later. She then submitted a proposal to the Farmington Daily Times to open a Dine Bureau with her as bureau chief, which they did.

    When the deadly 1989 riot between MacDonald supporters and Navajo police erupted, Marley and a Gallup Independent reporter were the only reporters on the scene.

    Her work, which has received awards from NAJA and ANA, has been published in News From Indian Country, Heyward, Wisc., The Native Voice, Rapid City, S.D., New Mexico Magazine, the National Museum of the American Indian magazine; Farmington Daily Times, the Gallup Independent, and two books on Native Americans.

            “There is a lot to like about Marley Shebala as a community journalist,” Hanna wrote. “She is, plain and simple, a very good read. I especially enjoy her descriptive writing, regardless the subject matter. Whether the story is a ‘Reporter's Notebook’ or about a dogs gone wild problem or families waiting to have their dream homes realized, Marley tells the story well. She fits an adage of mine — ‘A good story can be 5 inches or 50 inches. as long as it flows.’ Some so-called experts argue today that all stories should be in the 10-20 inch range. Bull. Readers are adults who want full stories told. Shebala does this with great skill. Her community involvement seems to match her fine community writing.”

First runner-up

Bill Hess, Sierra Vista Herald

    Bill Hess, 68, enlisted in the Air Force in 1957 and retired as a master sergeant with 24 years, one month, five days and four hours of service. Hess began his journalism career at the Prescott Courier and moved after about a year to what is now the Sierra Vista Herald as the military affairs reporter. He has worked for Wick Communications for nearly 22 years, mostly in Sierra Vista. He was part of a three-member team that reported on Central American issues in the early 1980s, traveling to El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. The team received a first place in the Inland Press Association's investigative reporting category. He won another first place Inland award for his series about former GIs remembering World War II. He has been embedded with the 11th Signal Brigade at Fort Huachuca on a number of deployments, traveling with parts of the unit to Somalia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Iraq.

            “Wow, what great opportunities for good journalism for Bill Hess — China, Kuwait and Iraq,” Hanna wrote. “His quality writing certainly brought home for readers what some of their own from their community are experiencing halfway around the world. Marvelous writing. I applaud not only the craftsmanship of Bill Hess, but also the vision of his paper to realize that community journalism can have no borders — in spending the capital to allow the reporter to travel where he did last year Sierra Vista Herald readers were well served.

Hess enjoys cooking and each year prepares an Italian dinner for all the employees of the newspaper. He also enjoys classical music and has performed with the Tombstone Repertory Theater, in melodramas, usually typecast as the villain's bumbling helper.

            Hess has three children — Tarryl, Stewart and Kevin — grandchildren Lauren, Sara, Sarah, Daniel and Sean and great-granddaugher, Emma. His wife, Sally, died in 1991.

Second runner-up (tie)

Betsey Bruner, Arizona Daily Sun

            Betsey Bruner, 60, has been a reporter and editor for the Arizona Daily Sun since 2001. In addition to serving as community editor, she has covered religion, and diverse aspects of local news, including environment, history and health. Recently, she assumed many responsibilities of an editor and feature writer for the arts and living section.

            “I really like her writing style,” Hanna wrote. “She pulls you in to stories and keeps you there throughout. Readers of the Daily Sun are fortunate to have Betsey help tell the story of their community.

            A fourth-generation Californian, Bruner came to Arizona summer 1998 to live off-the-grid northeast of Flagstaff. Her journalism career began in 1993 at small community newspapers in the wine country of Sonoma County, Calif. She has also been a commercial photographer and photojournalist for 35 years, including a long photographic career in San Francisco. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.

            Bruner has won a number of Arizona journalism awards in the past few years, including a first-place award for beat reporting in the 2004 Arizona Press Club contest

Second runner-up (tie)

Catherine J. Rourke, Red Rock/Sedona Review

    Catherine J. Rourke, 53, is a New York City native who has written about social and workplace reform most of her career. She published her first story, “Is the American Dream Really Crumbling?” for her high school newspaper in 1969. After studying ancient Greek and Latin at the City University of New York and Oxford University, England, she began her journalism career at The Miami Herald in 1979. After working for both daily and weekly newspapers across the nation, she moved to Sedona in 2000, where she served as chief copy editor and writer for the Sedona Red Rock News.

In 2004, Rourke launched her “Tales from the Trenches” column in The Red Rock/Sedona Review “to inspire the Sedona community out of complacency and into action.” Designed to serve as a voice for the working poor in an affluent community, it offers an in-depth analysis of social issues, emphasizing the need for reform in health care, housing, the workplace, immigration, wages and “archaic” labor laws. To tell her tales, Rourke picks up garbage with trash collectors, burns toast with waitresses, makes beds with immigrant maids and flushes toilets with janitors, celebrating their contributions to the community while posing “soul-utions” to their economic plight.

            “In her ‘Tales from the Trenches’ writings, Rourke covers a myriad of everyday life experiences of people,” Hanna wrote. “Sometimes such writing can be trite and cliché, but not by her. She gives it interesting life. Good job.”