Norfolk

Francis L. “Frank” Partsch is the retired editorial page editor of The Omaha World-Herald, having held the post in 1982-2002 and 2004-2005. A native of St. Paul, Neb., with journalism degrees from the University of Nebraska (now UNL) and The Ohio State University, Partsch joined The World-Herald in 1976 as chief of its state capital bureau in Lincoln. He had spent the previous four years as editor of the thrice-weekly Sidney Telegraph in the Nebraska Panhandle. Under his editorship, the Sidney newspaper received Nebraska Press Association awards for an editorial, and for community service and service to agriculture, as well as National Newspaper Association awards in the latter two categories. He had come to Sidney from Chicago, where he was a staff reporter in the Midwest bureau of The Wall Street Journal in 1970-72, focusing on agriculture and the food industry.

A member of the National Conference of Editorial Writers (absorbed into the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 2016) starting in 1985, he served on that organization’s board of directors and edited its quarterly journal, The Masthead, in 2003 and 2004. In 2007, he was inducted into the Nebraska Journalism Hall of Fame and the following year received a dean’s award from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications, formerly the N.U. School of Journalism. He was given a life membership in the National Conference of Editorial Writers, and, in 2016 was inducted into the Omaha Press Club Journalists of Excellence Hall of Fame. From 2005 until early 2008, he remained with The World-Herald as a part-time assistant to the publisher.