The Greensboro Watchman took second place for Best Business Story or Column in the annual Alabama Media Awards at the Alabama Press Association’s 2026 Summer Convention this past weekend in Orange Beach, part of a strong showing by Watchman Media Group papers that also swept the top three places in Best Public Service and claimed a first-place First Amendment honor.
The Watchman’s second-place entry, “Project Whisker could see long-idle Greensboro catfish facility brought back into operation,” followed the Greensboro City Council’s vote to authorize tax abatements for redevelopment of the former Southern Pride Catfish processing plant on Highway 69, once among the largest operations of its kind in the country.
The story traced the plant’s ownership through Mississippi-based Heartland Catfish, which reduced operations and finally closed the Greensboro facility in 2020, and worked through state corporate records to identify the company pursuing the site as Alabama Catfish LLC, tracing its ownership to Greene Group, Inc., a holding company whose principal owner is Paul Bryant Jr.
The reporting laid out the corporate genealogy behind a code-named development project and explained what the council had actually voted to authorize.
Beyond the Watchman’s business honor, the company’s Times-Standard-Herald of Perry County swept Best Public Service, taking first, second and third place, all for entries by publisher John Allan Clark.
The first-place entry documented the financial condition of Marion’s failing water system; the second recognized the paper’s ongoing criminal justice reporting based on following public records; and the third chronicled the collapse of the city’s police command structure following a mass resignation.
Watchman Media Group’s papers compete in Division D, the largest of the competition’s divisions and the one in which most of the state’s weekly newspapers compete, from larger community weeklies to small rural papers. The association counts more than 100 active member newspapers.
“Public service and First Amendment are the categories that matter most to me, and Division D is far and away the biggest field in the contest,” said publisher John Allan Clark.
“Most of the papers in the state are in it. Most of them are bigger than we are, they have more staff and deeper pockets, some are corporate publications with considerable resources. We are a small, independent paper even by Division D standards. It’s an honor to win in such a crowded field.”
The Times-Standard-Herald also won first place in the Freedom of Information/First Amendment special category for “Marion Water System: Audit Accountability,” which grew out of the paper’s fight for access to public records and a public meeting.
