Corsicana editors wins TPA First Amendment Scholarship

AUSTIN — A 10-year veteran newspaperman is the recipient of the inaugural TPA First Amendment Institute Scholarship.

Raymond Linex II, editor of the Corsicana Daily Sun, was selected from a field of applicants to receive the $1,500 scholarship for the 2003 Class of the First Amendment Institute (FAI), sponsored by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. The scholarship is open to any employee of a TPA member newspaper.

“It’s an incredible honor, and certainly a surprise,” Linex said. “I am thrilled to have this opportunity.

“My goal, as is the Daily Sun’s, is to have a complete, community-oriented newspapers with fair and accurate coverage of events and issues related to the community. As a lifelong sports fanatic and still relatively new ‘news’ guy, the First Amendment Institute should go a long way in helping me be the leader I need to be to direct the (Sun) in that direction.”

Linex has been editor of the Sun for more than two years and started his journalism career as a football stringer at the daily 10 years ago.

He also was a correspondent and sports writer at the Arlington Morning News. He returned to Corsicana in 1998 as sports editor and became editor in October 2000. He accomplishments include being named Associated Press Sports Editors’ 1996 columnist of the year under 10,000 circulation and sharing two second place Associated Press Managing Editors’ team awards for community service in 1998 and 2002.

Linex said he strives to make the Sun a credible, community newspaper by hiring the right staff, never settling for mediocrity and having a passion for learning.

“That starts with me, and the First Amendment Institute would go a long way for a guy who knows more about the Texas Rangers’ payroll than his county’s budget process,” Linex wrote in his scholarship essay.

The goal of the FAI is to provide a select group of individuals the opportunity to study, at a graduate level, the importance and applications of the First Amendment, its relationship to freedom of information and its implications for our democracy.

“The First Amendment Institute has proven to be an incredible resource for journalists, attorneys, consumers and just plain folks who want to learn more about our most basic constitutional rights,” said Wanda Garner Cash, FOIFT president.

FAI graduates have come from a range of fields and backgrounds including law, journalism, education, advocacy groups, state agencies and concerned citizens.

TPA created the scholarship as a way to enhance journalists’ understanding of the First Amendment and the role it plays in everyday life.

“The FOI Foundation is grateful that TPA recognized the benefits by endowing this scholarship and encouraging TPA members to participate,” said Cash, who also serves as TPA second vice president.

The TPA scholarship pays for the tuition to the FAI that includes four, two-day sessions exploring the five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment — press, speech, religion, petition and assembly.

Scholarship recipients or their newspapers provide their own hotel accommodations and travel to and from the session sites in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.