Your little local newspaper doesn't have to be a piece of worthless dung

The reason we say that is the Victoria Advocate, which definitely qualifies as "little local newspaper," was recognized today by the Associated Press Managing Editors Association for papers with circulation less than 40,000.

The Advocate was honored for an interactive package complementing a 16-month examination of illegal immigration.

It also received a "First Amendment Citation" for shedding light on a "dysfunctional local judicial system."

No other newspaper in Texas won anything or even got an attaboy in the national competition, according to the AP story.

The Advocate is a "family owned" newspaper, meaning it's not owned by a corporation like, say, Southern Newspapers, which owns the local Clute-based daily called "The Facts."

Maybe that's a clue as to why The Victoria Advocate can do things that The Facts doesn't. Or maybe the Victoria newspaper has brighter employees and managers. We have no idea!

We won't go on and on about The Advocate because we realize many of you rednecks hate it when I write about newspapers, which you detest because (fill in the blank), but I will share something I stumbled across regarding the little paper located down the coast from us.

To attract college interns to the one-horse town for internship duty, they provide living quarters across the street from the paper and two meals a day (in addition to the $100 per week pay.)

On this page you can see a brief video that explains all that. Pretty clever recruting tool.

Oh, and here's the homepage for the Advocate. They feature lots of blogs. Meanwhile, the Clute-based daily still doesn't get the blog thing, apparently, since they have none.

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A note about the illustration above this post:

A graphic artist, Charles Apple, on his blog, cited The Advocate's A-1 "page topper" as his favorite back when the last Star Trek movie made a big splash.

"Victoria — circulation about 33,000 — built some really, really interesting movie-themed pages last year," Apple wrote.

Apple interviewed The Advocate's creative director in this post last year about graphics stuff, with lots of examples of what they're doing down there in Victoria.