Philip Timothy

Sport: Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism

Induction Year: 2019

University: Northwestern State

Induction Year: 2019

For more than four decades, Timothy has crisscrossed the state covering sports with accomplishment and distinctive style at all levels, and along the way he has also served as mentor to dozens of current and former sports writers. His LSWA leadership was a pivotal factor in gaining and maintaining traction that resulted in the long-awaited museum construction a decade later.

Timothy has won more than 80 national, regional and state awards in categories such as game event, feature writing, spot news, investigative reporting, outdoors, headlines, photography, makeup, special sections and overall sports section. He has won more than 65 LSWA awards including Best Sports Section (three times) and Prep Writer of the Year twice. He placed either second or third three more times. In 1988, he not only became the first LSWA writer to win the LSWA’s Division II Prep Writer of the Year (1986-1987) twice but was also the first to repeat as winner of the prestigious award.

He was named the 2004 Communicator of the Year by the Louisiana Wildlife Federation for his extensive career as an outdoor writer, the 2005 Louisiana High School Athletic Association Prep Journalism Award, and a special honor from the Louisiana High School Athletic Association/Louisiana High School Coaches Association.

Timothy has also long served as a member of the LSWA’s Hall of Fame Selection Committee and the Louisiana High School Athletic Association/Louisiana High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame Selection Committee (12 years). He was the recipient of the prestigious LSWA’s Mac Russo Award in 2004.

The Tioga High School graduate began his career covering youth and high school sports as a sophomore at Northwestern State for The Natchitoches Times, a paper he returned to as its sports editor (1978-1980).

Timothy spent the early part of his career at small weeklies — the Red River Journal (Pineville), The Journal-Enterprise (Mansfield), The Beauregard News (DeRidder), The Centerville Press (Alabama), and at The Bunkie Record/The Marksville Journal.

As a one-man operation in the weeklies, he was called upon to do it all from taking his own photos, developing those photos, keeping stats, writing stories, laying out the sports section, catching the papers as they came off the press and from time-to-time, even delivering them.

His versatility proved beneficial in his work at daily newspapers – Monroe News-Star (1976), The Lafayette Advertiser (1986-1997), and The Alexandria Town Talk (1997-2007).

He rose from a sports writer to executive sports editor for the Advertiser; writer to assistant sports editor at the Town Talk; outdoor writer to editor of Gannett’s statewide GOutdoors & Louisiana Hunt & Fish, and as a writer to an editor of Gannett’s niche products.

For the past 13 years, while working for the statewide Baptist Message newspaper, he has still found time to cover central Louisiana teams as a freelancer for the Bunkie Record, The Town Talk and The Baton Rouge Morning Advocate.