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Manfred Tempelmayr wins 2011 Miles Turnbull Master Editor/Publisher award from WNPA

11.9.11

Manfred Tempelmayr

Manfred Tempelmayr, the president of Sound Publishing from 2000 to 2010, received the Miles Turnbull Master Editor/Publisher award to rounds of applause from his peers in Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.

Co-presenters at the Oct. 7 WNPA awards luncheon were Bill Will, executive director of WNPA, and Sue Ellen Riesau, WNPA Past-President and publisher of the Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum.

“When I was very new to being a publisher and still trying to figure out what exactly a publisher does Manfred offered me his friendship personally and professionally,” said Riesau.

“He recruited me to the board of WNPA and over the next few years he generously mentored me on many levels with his razor sharp insight and wonderful wit,” she said. Arriving at Sound Publishing in October 2000, over the next 10 years Tempelmayr managed the company’s growth to more than double in size while being active with the local chamber of commerce, Kitsap Mental Health and other community organizations on the Kitsap Peninsula.

The earliest acquisitions were the Islands’ Weekly on Lopez Island in 2000, the Journal of the San Juan Islands in Friday Harbor in 2001, and Kingston Community News in 2004.

The Covington/Maple Valley Reporter, which now also serves Black Diamond, was launched in 2005.

The company’s purchase of King County Journal Newspapers in late 2006 secured nine non-dailies on the west side of Puget Sound and shuttered the eponymous daily.

In 2007, Sound started Reporter newspapers for Issaquah/Sammamish and Sumner/Lake Tapps, and bought the Kirkland Courier, Marysville Globe and Arlington Times.

In 2008, it purchased the Enumclaw and Bonney Lake/Lake Tapps Courier-Herald and merged the Sumner/Lake Tapps Reporter with the Bonney Lake weekly.

During Tempelmayr’s years of service as a WNPA trustee, he chaired the Membership & Bylaws, Convention & Workshops, and Advertising committees.

Though he was in line to be president when he retired in 2010, he had been forthcoming about those plans and provided a worthy successor for the Advertising Committee in Lori Maxim, now vice president of West Sound Operations.

Tempelmayr started his newspaper career with an eight-month stint at the Fernwood News in Victoria, B.C., then moved on to a nine-year tenure as reporter and associate editor of the Lake News in Lake Cowichan B.C. For the last six of those years, he served concurrently as general manager of the Cowichan News in Duncan, B.C.

He became part owner of the Duncan paper in 1982, his first experience on the business side of the industry, and in 1984 sold that newspaper to Island Publishers, at that time a subsidiary of Black Press.

Later, as publisher of Ladysmith Chemainus Chronicle, Tempelmayr also managed the Ladysmith Press Division of Island Publishers Limited.

He was named regional manager of the company’s North Island Group in 1988 and vice- president in 1992.

During those years, he served as president of the British Columbia and Yukon Community Newspapers Association and the Canadian Community Newspapers’ Association.

Since retiring, he and his wife Pam spend time in their homes in Poulsbo and the Gulf Islands in British Columbia.

His part-time consulting position with Sound ends in May 2012.

The award commemorates Miles Turnbull, a past executive direct of WNPA and the former publisher of the Leavenworth Echo, who died in 1994. It is presented at the discretion of the WNPA board.

Tempelmayr wins WNPA award