STAFF REPORT

Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel columnist Jim Brunelle is among those being honored by the Maine Press Association.

The association announced this week it will be inducting four people into the state newspaper industry's Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame Committee chose Brunelle, political reporter, columnist and commentator; the late Robert B. Beith, executive editor and publisher for the Guy Gannett newspapers; the late Campbell B. Niven, publisher of The Times Record in Brunswick for 30 years; and the late Polly Ouimet, a longtime news editor for the Lewiston Sun Journal.

The four will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Oct. 10 during MPA's 11th annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony at The Atlantic Oakes in Bar Harbor.

Brunelle and his wife, Ellen, came to Maine in 1965 when WCSH-TV hired him to anchor the 11 p.m. news and put together reports for the 6 o'clock news. When Henry Magnusson left as the station's legislative and political reporter, Brunelle took that job.

In 1969, Brunelle joined the Guy Gannett Publishing Co., moving from broadcast journalism to print.

He was a political reporter, editorial page editor of the Maine Sunday Telegram, editorial writer and political columnist.

Now retired, he continues working as a free-lance columnist, sharing his observations and commentary in various Maine publications, including the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, where his column appears on Thursdays.

Beith, who died in 1990 at the age of 85, began his newspaper career as a reporter for the Camden Courier-Post in New Jersey in 1926. The next year, he moved to Portland and took a job as the police reporter for the Evening Express. He joined the New Jersey bureau of The Associated Press in 1935, but returned to Portland two years later as assistant city editor for the Express.

Beith rose through the ranks, working as editorial writer, assistant managing editor and managing editor. In 1948, he was named executive editor of Gannett's Portland newspapers: the Evening Express, the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram.

In 1971, company President Jean Gannett Hawley named him publisher of Gannett's three Portland papers, as well as its dailies in Augusta and Waterville.

"Cam" Niven, who died on April 28 at the age of 78, "was a pillar in the Brunswick-Bath area," wrote Alan Baker, publisher of The Ellsworth American and the Mount Desert Islander, in nominating Niven.

Niven grew up in Brunswick and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1952. He was the advertising manager for the Brunswick Record from 1956 until 1961, when he became publisher.

Ouimet, who died of cancer on June 13 at the age of 76, was a Lewiston-Auburn native who joined the Sun Journal in 1966. She worked in the newsroom's state department, which gathered and reported news from western Maine.

In 1976, she was promoted to director of suburban and regional news. Ouimet became features editor and assistant to the managing editor in 1994, and retired in 1996.