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Remember the big-deal Punch Awards announced by the New York Times Company a few months ago? The big-deal cash prizes for stellar NYT Co. employees who did like ol' Arthur Sulzberger Sr. and demonstrated "a commitment to [the] Company's Core Purpose, Core Values and Rules of the Road"? Well, they've been announced, and, um, yeah, not so exciting. One went to the TimesSelect team. That other went to the staffs of two of the companies papers located in Louisiana, The Courier and the Daily Comet. The most entertaining part of this — hell, the only entertaining part — is that they own a paper called the Daily Comet. Cool, right?

The entirely uninteresting (though occasionally intriguingly punctuated) memo is after the jump.

Dear Colleagues,

Today we have the great pleasure to announce the winners of the 2005 Punch Sulzberger Award, which was created to celebrate, honor and perpetuate the principles that Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, our chairman emeritus, championed throughout his illustrious career.

The Punch Award has two categories: One celebrates editorial excellence, with a special focus on service to the community; the second honors business merit. Yet this year, given the extraordinary challenges in our marketplace, we are recognizing two achievements that encompass the combined attributes of journalistic distinction combined with business success.

This year we received ten submissions. Collectively, they provided exciting examples of our commitment to innovation and growth in action. While the entries contributed to our Company in many different ways, there were three important underlying themes to this body of work:

First and foremost is that each and every one of them was rooted in our organization's Core Purpose: "To enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment."

Second, the majority of these applications attributed their successes to exceptional teamwork.

And finally, these successful initiatives were pursued in the midst of an uneven financial environment that continues to challenge our industry.

All in all, this year's Punch Award submissions were truly impressive and inspiring. We congratulate all the employees who were nominated on their hard work and outstanding accomplishments.

So, we're very proud to announce that the first 2005 Punch Award for journalistic and business excellence, goes to.

The TimesSelect team for their extraordinary achievement in creating an innovative online subscription product that produced a new revenue stream for NYTimes.com and served as a major retention tool for our home delivery customers.

The staff on this team could only have succeeded as a cross-department, multi-platform, trans-property effort, including our Internet operations as well as our New York Times newspaper in print. Moreover, this outstanding team exemplified two of our new Rules of the Road by keeping a relentless focus on serving our customers and innovating to reach our full competitive potential.

Congratulations to the team of TimesSelect for their magnificent achievement.

Now let us turn to our second award, which is presented for editorial excellence with a special emphasis on service to the community. And the winner is.

The Courier and Daily Comet, two of our Regional newspapers located in Louisiana, which endured the horrific hurricanes, Katrina and Rita. The staff of these papers delivered round-the-clock quality news and information to their readers, who were scattered across the South after the local communities complied with mandatory evacuation orders. Moreover, these two papers missed only one day of publication throughout the ordeals.

Yet print was not the exclusive method of serving the communities. The corresponding Web sites responded immediately, providing their audiences with rich and interactive features, including photo galleries and Web logs, while providing up-to-the-minute data including evacuee resources and information about closings, cancellations and changes in municipal services.

These triumphs were accomplished with unparalleled speed, which showed that even at great personal risk the men and women of these fine newspapers are deeply committed to our cherished Core Purpose. Moreover, their actions confirmed our esteemed Rule of the Road to uphold the highest journalistic, business and personal ethics.

We applaud the The Courier and Daily Comet for their inspirational efforts.

Congratulations to our 2005 winners! We also want to thank all of the other nominees. While they did not win, their efforts are worth noting. So please take a moment to read about all the outstanding achievements submitted on our companywide intranet, InSite (http://web.nytimes.com/insite).

We look forward to next year at this time, when we will recognize the inspiring performance of the 2006 winners. We hope that you and your colleagues are working on initiatives worthy of the Punch Award right now.

Thank you,
Arthur and Janet

Earlier: NYT Co.: Be Like Punch, Win Money