ALTAMONT — For the 11th time, Enterprise editor Melissa Hale-Spencer has been named to the Golden Dozen by the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.

In the society’s annual contest, opinion writers are judged for their editorial skills and courage, with the best of the top dozen winning the Golden Quill, which Hale-Spencer has won twice.

The awards were announced this month at the society’s annual convention, held in Reno, Nevada.

Hale-Spencer was awarded for her October 2022 editorial, “The common good starts with respect for individuals,” written after an incident at a football game where students wore blackface.

“Racism is everywhere in our society. That doesn’t mean it should be tolerated,” said the editorial. “Each of us should work, as the Guilderland schools are, to combat racism. You have to recognize a problem in order to solve it.”

Steve Bagwell, editorial page editor of the McMinnville News-Register in Oregon and a professor at Oregon State University, won the Golden Quill this year for his editorial, “What happened to concern over the heavy hand of government?” which holds two elected officials accountable for their refusal to bring needed public-health funding to their community.

The Golden Dozen contest this year was judged by Brian Duggan, general manager of KUNR Public Radio in Nevada and a former investigations editor at the Reno Gazette-Journal.

As the Golden Dozen judge, Duggan wrote, “At times, it can be tempting to wallow in the tumultuous tide that’s swept the newspaper industry. During my time in the industry, I saw firsthand the cutbacks, empty chairs and stories left untold.”

Duggan said he was heartened, though, as the contest judge, to see “the necessary work of democracy” being done as institutions and leaders were held accountable on the pages of local newspapers. “It was truly a pleasure,” he wrote, “to see the breadth of issues covered, the pointed turns of phrase and the passion to make things better.”

Duggan had this to say about Hale-Spencer’s editorial: “Newspapers at their best are a conduit for a community’s mutual understanding — especially when it comes to difficult, emotionally-charged topics.

“Melissa Hale-Spencer’s editorial addresses the fallout following a group of high school students showing up to a football game wearing blackface. Hale-Spencer’s editorial doesn’t rush the issue. It explored the history of racist incidents in her community and ended with an appeal toward healing. This is empathetic local journalism at its best.”

Editorials written by Hale-Spencer are accompanied every week by illustrations from artist Carol Coogan. Her drawing for the prize-winning editorial featured the beautiful face of a young Black girl with profoundly sad eyes as a single tear formed on her cheek.

Hale-Spencer herself graduated from Guilderland High School, where she was an editor at The Journal, and then from Wellesley College, where she wrote for The Wellesley News.

She learned to write from her father, a lifelong newspaperman. She took her first reporting job when her parents called on her to help at their Adirondack weekly, The Lake Placid News, where her future husband, Gary Spencer, also began a career in journalism.

Hale-Spencer, 70, started writing for The Enterprise as a young mother of two daughters in the 1980s. Magdalena and Saranac are both are alumnae of Cornell University: Saranac, a philosophy major, is a reporter for factcheck.org in Philadelphia; Magdalena, with degrees in law and veterinary medicine, is a mother working as a lawyer in Schroon Lake.

Hale-Spencer introduced the first regular, strongly-worded editorials to The Enterprise, writing them as a reporter covering the Helderberg Hilltowns and assumed the masthead in 1996 as co-editor with fellow staff writer Andrew Schotz.

She became a co-publisher in July 2015 when she purchased the paper with her husband and with Marcello Iaia from longtime publisher and printer James Gardner. She and Iaia run The Enterprise, which this year moved home to the 19th-Century Enterprise building at 123 Maple Ave. in Altamont