Bill Hudgins, a journalist with 25 years experience reporting and editing, has won a technical writing award in the 16th annual APEX competition for an article he wrote for Land Line.
Hudgins’ winning article was about Wi-Fi high-speed Internet access and what truckers should be aware of in terms of security online. The article was one of 5,462 entries from business and nonprofit publications. The story is posted in the Land Line achieves at www.landlinemag.com/Archives/2003/Nov03/Features/wi_fi_wise.htm.
The APEX competition, or Awards for Publication Excellence, is sponsored by the editors of Writing That Works, a newsletter for communicators who write, edit and manage business publications. Writing That Works is published by Communications Concepts Inc., which was founded in 1984 and provides problem-solving information to professional communicators.
The APEX award is just the latest chapter in Hudgins award-winning career, which began in 1979 at the Birmingham (AL) Post Herald. Hudgins also worked at the Cleveland (TN) Daily Banner and the Nashville Banner before moving into the field of public relations and newsletter writing in 1987.
In 1993 he joined Hammock Publishing to help relaunch and edit Road King Magazine, which he was involved with for nine years. Hammock Publishing also produced NAST's member newsletter and a few years back, NAST awarded Hudgins its first Member of the Year award.
“I still work full-time at Hammock Publishing on projects unrelated to trucking,” Hudgins said, “but, trucking is in my blood.”
Consequently, he started contributing articles to Land Line and other trucking publications and Web sites.
But Hudgins involvement with trucking doesn’t stop with his writing. Last year, he and his wife became the sponsors of the Parade of Lights across the Mackinac Straits Bridge at NAST's St. Ignace, MI, truck show ‑ The Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show. They created their own award, The Chicken Lights award, which consists of a string of chicken-and-egg Christmas tree lights.
Hudgins also served as vice president of the Truck Writers of North America for two terms, the second of which just ended this year. Most recently, Hudgins was a judge at the Walcott Truck Show.
Watch for his column, “Downshift,” in the pages of Land Line.
