Inducted into MDDC’s Hall of Fame in 2012. This article is based on information presented at the time.
It is with great honor and respect that I nominate Bruce Hotchkiss for the Maryland Delaware DC Press Association’s Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Community newspapers have been in Bruce’s blood for nearly 60 years, going back to the Hunterdon County desk of The Newark Evening News in New Jersey and the Longmont Daily Times-Call in Colorado.
“My heart and soul (and I suspect talent) is in community newspapers — as compared to ‘metro’ papers — in publications which carefully define their audience (their community) and are dedicated to serving it,” Hotchkiss once wrote. “Papers in which obituaries and birth notices are as important as the stories on Page 1.”
His career in the MDDC universe began as editor of The Star-Democrat in Easton, Md., in 1977. A year later, Hotchkiss took the helm of the Central Shore Farmer, amonthly supplement in The Star-Democrat and grew it into The Delmarva Farmer, a major agricultural weekly newspaper for the Mid-Atlantic region.
He has described his more than 30 years at that paper as “the most exciting and most gratifying in my 57 years in journalism.”
Through those years, the accolades poured in to the newspaper as a result of Hotchkiss’s leadership. Congratulatory notes and awards from USDA secretaries, state governors, farmer organizations and university extension services lining the company’s halls all speak to his passion for news and the importance of the newspaper in the agriculture industry.
He served as editor-in-chief of “The Farmer” until semi-retirement in 1995 but still remains on as a senior editor to write its editorials and advise the news department. He also runs an agricultural media consulting firm. As editor of The Delmarva Farmer, Hotchkiss elevated a monthly insert in a daily newspaper to its own weekly pubilcation commonly referred to as “the farmer’s bible” with the mission of being the voice of the farmer for the region.
Along the way, Hotchkiss has mentored several young writers who have gone on to their own successful careers in writing and journalism. I can speak personally to this, having started at American Farm Publications, the parent company to The Delmarva Farmer as a staff reporter in 2006 and with his guidance, rising to managing editor. I treasure his advice, historical context and passion for getting a story, getting it right and telling people about it.
I urge the nomination committee to give careful consideration to Bruce Hotchkiss for decades of work in journalism and community newspapers in Maryland.
Submitted by Sean Clougherty
Managing Editor
American Farm Publications