Anfinson honored with Hubbard School award

Last month, the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis announced its roster of annual alumni awardees to be celebrated Thursday, Sept. 24, at Hubbard Honors, the school’s annual fundraising alumni dinner. 
Winning the school’s most prestigious honor, the Award for Excellence, was Reed Anfinson, a 1977 graduate who now co-owns the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, the Stevens County Times in Morris, and the Grant County Herald in Elbow Lake, with his wife, Shelly. 
He is also a partner in Quinco Press, a newspaper printing plant in Lowry that prints 53 community newspapers.
Anfinson has played a pivotal role in advocating for the newspaper industry in Minnesota and nationally, having served as president of the Minnesota Newspaper Association, the National Newspaper Association (NNA) — the main lobby group for community newspapers in Washington, D.C., and of the National Newspaper Foundation.
In nominating Anfinson for the prize, Professor Emeritus Al Cross from the University of Kentucky and former director of its Rural Journalism Institute wrote, “There is no more authoritative and energetic advocate for community journalism in the United States than Reed Anfinson, who frequently uses his experiences as a rural editor and publisher to help those in the news media and other businesses understand the existential challenges faced by rural journalists and their paymasters.”
The Hubbard School will also be honoring nine other alums Sept. 24 in two award categories: Pathfinder Awards for established alumni leaders in their professions who have carved a path of creative excellence, leadership and community-mindedness, and the Above the Fold Awards for recent graduates who are already making an impact in their field.
About Reed Anfinson
After graduation from the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Anfinson worked for the Minnesota House and a congressional campaign, before returning to Benson as Monitor-News editor. 
In 1990, he and his brother, Rob, bought the Monitor-News from James Kinney and Ronald Anfinson. In 1996, Reed bought his brother’s half-interest and became sole owner. He and his wife, Shelly, purchased the Grant County Herald in 2014 and the Stevens County Times in 2019. 
Anfinson won NNA’s 2019 James O. Amos Award for a career of distinguished service and leadership to the nation’s community press and his newspapers’ communities, the 2003 Al McIntosh Distinguished Service to Journalism Award, the state newspaper association’s highest honor; and First Amendment awards from the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information and St. Cloud State University’s First Amendment award.
In 2023, Anfinson was presented the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors’ top prize, the Eugene Cervi Award, at the group’s annual conference in Reno, Nevada.
Anfinson is the first Minnesotan to win the Cervi Award. It is named for the crusading editor of the old Rocky Mountain Journal, recognizes an editor who consistently acts with the conviction that “good journalism begets good government,” with consistently aggressive reporting of local government.
Further, it recognizes an editor with a career of outstanding public service through community journalism that adhered to the highest standards of the craft, with the deep reverence for the English language that was the hallmark of Cervi’s writing.
He has also won multiple Golden Dozen awards in editorial writing from the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors as well as awards in column writing and editorials from the Minnesota Newspaper Association.
Anfinson currently serves on the Center for Rural Policy and Development board, which researches and reports on rural Minnesota’s challenges. Its research helps the Minnesota Legislature craft legislation that addresses these challenges. He was appointed to terms on the Center’s board first by Gov. Mark Dayton and then by Gov. Tim Walz.
Anfinson served six years on the Minnesota News Council’s hearing board, a body that gave citizens to be heard on their complaints about what they saw as unfair news coverage. If the News Council agreed that a newspaper, radio station or news station had been unfair, that media outlet agreed to publish or air the findings.  He served as vice president of the News Council when it folded after the internet gave citizens a new outlet for their complaints.
He served on the first Variety Club Children’s Hospital Parents Advisory Board at the University of Minnesota and is a past chair of the Swift County-Benson Hospital Foundation (now CentraCare-Benson).
He has served on local economic development groups and continues to cover city, county, school, and economic development meetings, as well as lay out pages, write feature stories, take photos, and write a weekly column.