For nearly 40 years, weekly newspaper editor Mike Buffington has been chronicling life and raising hell in a small Georgia community with columns and editorials in The Jackson Herald, his family's flagship newspaper. Along the way, he has become one of the nation's top award-winning weekly editors having been honored with dozens of state, regional and national awards for opinion writing and investigative reporting. Among colleagues, Buffington is known for having a tenacious editorial voice. Because of that, he was honored in 2015 by the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors with its Eugene Cervi Award for a lifetime of aggressive writings. While many of his columns have focused on community issues, he also writes about national and international events, often from a first-hand perspective. From the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, he was in the right place at the right time to report about some major events over the last four decades. Buffington's columns also cover a variety of non-political issues as well. He has written about the deaths of friends and family, the triumph of athletes, murders, The South, war and his personal reflections as a parent. This book brings together 151 of his best columns in a compilation covering these and other topics.
About the Author: Mike Buffington Mike Buffington is co-owner and co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. a family-run firm that publishes six weekly newspapers and a commercial printing plant in Northeast Georgia. He also serves as editor of the group's flagship newspaper, The Jackson Herald in Jefferson, Ga. Mike was born in Rome Ga., but moved to Jefferson as a child when his parents purchased The Herald in 1965. He a 1980 graduate of the University of Georgia's Henry Grady College of Journalism. Today, Mike and his brother Scott, own and publish the family's group of weekly newspapers. The brothers succeeded their parents, Helen Buffington and the late Herman Buffington, in the business. Over the last 50 years, the family's six newspapers have won over 1,000 state, regional and national awards. Among his 40+ personal state and national honors for opinion writing, Mike has won first place nine times for editorial and serious column writing and has also been among the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors' "Golden Dozen" award winners eight times since 1991. In 2015, he was honored with the Eugene Cervi Award by the ISWNE for a career of aggressive editorial writing and news coverage. In 2007, he was honored with the Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award "Best of Show" from among all media in the Southeast - newspapers, magazines, radio and television - for an investigative series that led to the downfall and conviction of a corrupt district attorney. In 2010, he was presented both the Georgia Press Association's "Freedom of Information Award" for editorials about corruption in a small town, and the association's "David Hudson Open Government Award" for 30 years of fighting against government secrecy. Among professional organizations, he is a past president of both the Georgia Press Association and the National Newspaper Association. He is a past president of the Jefferson Rotary Club, a graduate of Leadership Georgia and a retired Scoutmaster. Mike is also the founder of the Georgia Weekly Newspaper Museum in Homer, Ga. which showcases how a small town newspaper was printed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Among his varied interests, has been his extensive travel around the world in pursuit of both professional and personal adventures.