Well, I guess we can’t be big winners every time.

I returned on Sunday from the National Newspaper Association’s annual convention, which this year was held in St. Paul, Minn. The last week in September can have any type of weather in St. Paul. It has been known to snow, have thunderstorms or be 80 degrees.

We had the latter. That’s right, it was 84 degrees on Friday. Average temperature for that day is 67 degrees. Friday evening, my good friend, John Fearing, director of legal affairs for the Arizona Newspapers Association, and I walked to dinner about 10 blocks from our hotel. It was a perfect night out for walking.

The restaurant, Forepaugh’s, had been recommended to us by a front desk person at the hotel. It was excellent. I had a lamb loin that was out of this world. The restaurant is in an old Victorian mansion on Exchange Street. Our waitress said that she had waited on a number of Senators and other prominent Republicans when their convention was held just blocks away a few weeks ago.

“I know I’ve seen some of them on TV, but I don’t pay that much attention to politics,” she said. “So I couldn’t begin to tell you who they were.”

She couldn’t quite understand why we were in a hurry to get back to the hotel in time to watch the presidential debate.

John and I were fortunate to catch a van from our hotel, the Crown Plaza, that was at the front door of the restaurant as we were exiting. We got back to the hotel with five minutes to spare.

The next morning at breakfast, the comments on the outcome of the debate were just the same as the national news networks . . . if you were for Obama before the debate, you thought he won and if you were for McCain before, you thought he was victorious.

With that all said, let me tell you about the newspaper convention.

It opened on Thursday morning with something different. Rather than someone talking about the future of newspapers or some politician talking about the current state of the nation, we had Peter Yarrow as our guest speaker. He was the Peter of the former group, Peter, Paul and Mary.

For the past 10 years, Yarrow has been touring the country speaking and singing about bullying. Having been bullied in school as a child, he founded a nationwide program called Operation Respect, which seeks to make schools, camps and organizations that serve children safer, more respectful and more compassionate places.

He blended in parts of the many hit songs of Peter, Paul and Mary into his talk. I don’t think I have ever heard someone play the guitar as easily as Yarrow.

Of course, he led all of us in a sing-along of “Puff the Magic Dragon” to end his program.  I wonder how many times he has sung that song.

Seminars covered a variety of topics from using video on your website to writing techniques to new equipment. The main topic of the weekend was how the community newspapers are having much better years than our metropolitan counterparts.

The main reason is that the community papers provide local news, something readers can’t find anywhere else. I’ll be addressing that more next week.

At the annual business meeting on Saturday, John Stevenson, a publisher from Alabama was instalIed as the new association president. His wife, Jennifer Chandler, is the last American woman to win a gold medal in springboard diving at the Olympics. She won the title at the 1976 Montreal games.

I had dinner with John and Jennifer on Wednesday night. We became friends last year at one of the association functions. They had been in the audience for what may have been my daughter Holly’s last on-stage professional dancing performance. Holly’s show, “Movin’ Out,” was playing in Birmingham. It closed out a three-year tour there.

I didn’t know about Jennifer’s background until dinner last week.

Also at the Saturday luncheon, I again had the pleasure of announcing the Cruikshank Scholar winner for this year. She is Clare Becker from Bozeman, Montana. The program pays for graduate students who work for the association that is based at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.

One more thing I want to mention is that another publisher friend, Ken Rhoades of Blair Nebraska, received the Amos & McKinney Award which goes to publishers or editors who have committed themselves to the communities in which they publish a newspaper. Ken and wife Ginny visited Diane and me in Fountain Hills about three years ago.

The convention always closes with the presentation of of awards in the Better Newspapers Contest.

As I began this column, we didn’t fare as well as we have in recent years. Don’t get me wrong, it is still an honor to receive any type of award in a nationwide contest. But after receiving the top award in the Classified Section competition the past two years, there was some disappointment in getting an honorable mention in that category this year.

I am happy to report that reporter Ryan Winslett received a second place plaque for a feature story he wrote on a young guitar playing man named “Jack Ripper.”

After the awards, I joined my Denver publisher friends, Bob and Gerri Sweeney, for dinner. I have to give you one more restaurant recommendation in case you are ever in St. Paul. We ate at the St. Paul Grill in the St. Paul Hotel.

The scallops I had were superb as was the New York strip steak that the Sweeneys split.

And I think half of the convention attendees were in the restaurant. All were raving about the food.

It was announced that next year’s convention will be in Mobile, Ala. Now that’s somewhere I haven’t visited.