Maybe you could just write it up like they always were but in place of people names, horse names, farm names, show names.......you could just put "congratulations to the horse XXXX owned by XXXX from XXXXX farm for winning Super Horse of The World." and then the area columns could be turned into a sort of crossword puzzle activity where we read them and try to figure out who, what, when and where!
Seriously, I know first-hand the time and energy that goes into getting news from your area and putting it together into a readable and fun column. With the new parameters I'd have no idea what to write.
The editor might as well just go ahead and do away with them rather than have people that are volunteering to write the columns put a lot of work into them and then be told what they wrote cannot be published.