Longtime Missouri publisher Gary Sosniecki has been elected president of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE) for 2014-15.
Gary Sosniecki
Sosniecki was elected by the membership at the recent ISWNE conference in Durango, Colo. Barry Wilson, managing director of Asset Media Services, a global newspaper consulting business in Australia, was named vice president.
Sosniecki, with his wife, Helen, will host the 2015 ISWNE conference in Columbia, Mo., June 24-28. Wilson will host the 2016 conference in Australia.
Marcia Martinek, editor of the Herald Democrat in Leadville, Colo., and Andy Schotz, managing editor of The Gazette in Gaithersburg, Maryland, were elected to three-year terms on the ISWNE board of directors. Steve Ranson, editor of the Lahontan Valley News in Fallon, Nev., was elected to a two-year term.
A 1973 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Sosniecki has had a 34-year newspaper career that included owning three weekly newspapers and publishing a small daily, all in Missouri.
Gary and Helen Sosniecki owned the Humansville Star-Leader from 1980 to 1986, the Webster County Citizen in Seymour from 1988 to 1999 and The Vandalia Leader from 2003 to 2007. From 1999 to 2003, they were editors and publishers of The Lebanon Daily Record and vice presidents of its parent company, Lebanon Publishing Co., in Lebanon, Mo. He also has worked for The Jackson, Tenn., Sun, the Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale and the Hillsboro, Kan., Star-Journal.
Sosniecki is a past president of the Missouri Press Association, the Missouri Press Service and the Ozark Press Association and, with his wife, was a vice president of the Missouri Associated Press.
He is a two-time recipient of ISWNE’s Golden Quill award for editorial writing, and he and his wife received the organization’s lifetime-achievement award, the Eugene Cervi Award, in 2003. The Sosnieckis received the National Newspaper Association’s Community Development Award in 1998 and its President’s Award in 2007.
Since January 2008, Sosniecki has been a regional sales manager for TownNews.com in Moline, Ill. The Sosnieckis live in Le Claire, Iowa.