Bill Sniffin, former owner of the Winner Advocate, will receive the General James O. Amos award at the National Newspaper Association Foundation’s138th annual convention and trade show in Omaha, Neb., Sept. 27.
Sniffin of Lander, Wyo., owned the Winner Advocate for 23 years. He bought the newspaper from Don Johannsen.
The Amos award has been presented annually for the past 86 years to a single publisher. It is presented to a newspaperman who has provided distinguished service and leadership to community press and his community.
Sniffin was nominated by former U. S. Sen. Al Simpson’s press secretary Stan Cannon and retired publisher Dave Simpson of Cheyenne, Wyo., plus others.
At 78, Sniffin has has a long career in journalism that started when he was 17 writing a weekly column for the local Elgin, Iowa, newspaper—The Echo and was editor of his high school paper.
Sixty-one years in, he is still writing a weekly column for the 73,000 circulation Cowboy State Daily, the dominant media in Wyoming. He was publisher of this daily digital medium from 2020 to 2022.
Sniffin was born in Wadena, Iowa, in 1946. After high school, he attended a journalism short course at Iowa State University. He then became the sports editor in Harlan, Iowa and later sports editor at Denison, Iowa where he attended Midwestern College.
In 1966, he became editor of the Harlan newspapers, winning several national awards.
In 1970, he and his wife, Nancy, moved to Lander, Wyo., where he took over the Lander Wyoming State Journal as editor-publisher.
Over the next 29 years the couple operated the Lander newspaper, founded three other newspapers and purchased a number of other newspapers, plus he had a weekly paper in Maui.
Retired publisher and 2021 Amos award winner Larry Atkinson of Mobridge wrote, “You’d be hard pressed to to find anyone within the National Newspaper Association who has done more to promote community journalism while working tirelessly to contribute to his community, his state and even his nation. His efforts have extended beyond his home state of Wyoming as he has also owned community newspapers and other media related ventures in Montana and South Dakota and Hawaii.”
In his nomination letter, community newspaper advisor and columnist Ken Blum wrote that Sniffin “has been and still at age 78 an affable, extroverted doer of the first magnitude—a newspaperman and Wyoming lover through and through whose boundless energy, work ethic, high character and considerable talent make for an ideal candidate for the Amos award.”
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