Davis Turns 30

In the three years that the excitable Syracuse University basketball player has called the Carrier Dome court home, he has provided Davis with two shots that went on to win photography awards. This year’s awards season is no different.

“Scoop on the Floor” (below) garnered Davis a first-place Sports Photo award from the Syracuse Press Club at the annual awards banquet, held May 7 at Drumlins Country Club. Davis also won in the following categories and for the following photos: first place, Spot News, for Red Tide; first place, Feature Photo, for Bieber-ized; and second place, Portrait, for Mickey Mahan. Davis also won Third Place from the New York Press Association for his photo essay of the 2010 St. Patrick’s Parade, always good for some visual interest.

The end of awards season dovetailed nicely with another celebration for Davis: his 30th year of working for The New Times. The date was May 13, and we feted our longesttenured full-time employee with a surprise party that included a cameo from half of the members of The Coachmen, featuring Davis on the keyboard.

“I knew I wanted to work at The New Times,” Davis related, “and I happened to be in the right place at the right time for {former editor} Roland Sweet to be able to hire me. This is a terrific newspaper. When we are good we are very good, though we could always be better. And that’s one reason I come to work every day—to make this paper even better.”

Awards season marks a logical time to assess where we are as a newspaper, and where there is room for improvement. In addition to Davis’ impressive bounty, New Times staffers collected the following awards:

• Molly English-Bowers: Media Award from the Central New York Recreation and Parks Society and from the New York State Recreation and Parks Society, for the Syrathon Race Series.

• Ed Griffin-Nolan: First Place, Syracuse Press Club, News Feature/Series, for Hydrofracking; Second Place, Syracuse Press Club, Column, for Lake Effect Effect.

• James MacKillop: Second Place, Critique, Syracuse Press Club, for A League of Its Own, a review of Syracuse Stage’s production of Fences.

• Joe Glisson: Second Place, Syracuse Press Club, Cartoon, for The Spies Next Door.

• Staff: Third Place, New York Press

Association, Photographic Excellence, for the Best of Syracuse edition and the Historic Photo Issue.

In his 30 years Davis has witnessed the transition from noisy manual typewriters to Microsoft Word, manual typesetting to PDFs and darkroom to digital. But the core mission of The New Times remains the same: to deliver compelling news, arts and entertainment content using writing and photography unlike that you will read anywhere else in Syracuse.