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PRESS RELEASE
Conway Daily Sun March 30, 2010 Eastman, Basch win top ski feature writer awards
SUN VALLEY, Idaho
Two Conway journalists have won national writing awards for their coverage of the ski industry. Tom Eastman, a reporter and editor with The Conway Daily Sun, won the "Newspaper Features Writing" award Saturday at the annual Harold S. Hirsch Awards meeting of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association. Runner-up was Marty Basch, a former two-time winner, and award-winning Sun and Boston Globe outdoors writer. Sun publisher Mark Guerringue congratulated Eastman and Basch on their awards. "It's well deserved recognition," he said. "They are pros and among the best in the business. The Sun is lucky to have them."
Eastman is a two-time defending runner-up for the newspaper features award, having been named runnerup in 2001 while writing for The Mountain Ear and as runnerup in 2008 for the Sun. In addition to his regular contributions to the Sun, Eastman is managing editor of Valley Fun, a free monthly magazine aimed at tourists and visitors published by the Sun. He also does radio work for local station WMWV 93.5-FM as "The Valley Voice" and TV work on RSN TV 16.
Basch is the author of six books. He has contributed ski stories to the Sun for more than 15 years. He is a longtime Boston Globe correspondent, syndicated outdoor adventure columnist and contributor to many newspapers, magazines and web sites. He is editor of Windswept, the Mount Washington Observatory's magazine. In addition to the Sun and Boston Globe, his work can be found in a number of publications like the Concord Monitor, Valley News, Nashua Telegraph, Caledonian Record and New Hampshire magazine. Online, he's at Boston.com. Both Eastman and Basch are residents of Center Conway - and members of the 15-person Media Meisters Mountain Meisters team that competes at Cranmore each winter.
Eastman won Ski NH's Media Person of the Year award in 2001 and is a frequent ski history lecturer. In 1989, he wrote the ski history book on Cranmore and Hannes Schneider entitled, "Flight Without Wings: A Celebration of Hannes Schneider and 50 years of skiing at Cranmore." Eastman was picked in 1991 by then Gov. Judd Gregg to be a member of a seven-part state delegation that accompanied other state delegations to Japan, largely because of his knowledge of Schneider's contributions to the sport of skiing there. Basch has won awards from the Associated Press for his radio reporting and twice won the highly-regarded Harold Hirsch Award from the North American Snowsports Journalists Association for his ski writing as well as nine honorable mentions. One of his books - Winter Trails Vermont and New Hampshire - was noted as a National Outdoor Book Award honorable mention winner. An article he wrote in The Boston Globe was awarded a prestigious gold Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers. Eastman spoke about Mount Washington Valley ski school and ski shop pioneer Carroll Reed at the World Ski Congress at Park City, Utah, in 2002, and also spoke at a conference on Hannes Schneider in St. Anton Austria, in 2005. He studied journalism and political science at the University of New Hampshire under famed late writing mentor Donald Murray. He then worked with his brother, the late Steve Eastman, at The Mountain Ear for 28 years. He joined the Sun staff in July 2007. His articles have appeared in several magazines and newspapers over the years, including Yankee, NHtoDo and The Montreal Gazette. A 1975 graduate of Berwick Academy where he was class salutatorian, Eastman in 2001 received the school's Distinguished Alumni Award for his writing achievements.
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