Paul Steiger to Receive Missouri Honor Medal on Nov. 14

By Rachel Kaatmann

Columbia, Mo. (Nov. 8, 2005) -- Paul Steiger, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and vice president of Dow Jones & Company, will receive the third Missouri Honor Medal presented this year on Monday, Nov. 14, at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Steiger will teach a Master Class in Newspaper Editing from 11-11:50 a.m. in 278 Gannett. The medal will be awarded during a presentation at a luncheon following the class in the Reynolds Alumni Center on the University of Missouri campus.

Paul Steiger

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Since 1930, the Missouri School of Journalism has awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. Faculty members of the School select recipients of the Honor Medal annually. The medals are presented to the newspapers, periodicals, editors or publishers of newspapers and periodicals of persons engaged in the practice of Journalism for distinguished service to the field of Journalism.

A graduate of Yale University, Steiger came on board at The Wall Street Journal in 1966 as a reporter in the San Francisco bureau. He joined the Los Angeles Times in 1968 as a staff writer and transferred to the paper's Washington, D.C. bureau as an economic correspondent. He returned to Los Angeles in 1978 to serve as the Times' business editor.

In 1983, Steiger rejoined The Wall Street Journal as an assistant managing editor in New York and became deputy managing editor in April 1985. He was appointed managing editor in 1991 and became vice president in May 1992.

Under Steiger's leadership, The Wall Street Journal's reporters and editors have won 14 Pulitzer Prizes. The editors and news staffs of the European and Asian branches of The Wall Street Journal report to him.

Among his numerous achievements, in 2005 Steiger was elected chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based nonprofit organization to promote press freedom by working for the rights of journalists worldwide. Also this year, he was honored with the "Decade of Excellence" award from the World Leadership Forum.

Steiger also has been selected as the first recipient of the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Leadership Award, honoring his more than a decade of strong leadership at The Wall Street Journal. The John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California-Los Angeles honored him with the 2002 Gerald Loeb Award for lifetime achievement.

In 2002, Steiger was awarded the Columbia Journalism Award, given to honor a "singular journalistic performance in the public interest" and the highest honor awarded by the Columbia University School of Journalism. He was named a 2001-2002 Poynter Fellow by Yale University, and The National Press Foundation awarded him the 2001 George Beveridge Editor of the Year Award for qualities that produce excellence in media.

Steiger's other achievements include being elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board in March 1999. Steiger also won three Gerald Loeb Awards and two John Hancock awards for his economics and business coverage. He is also co-author of the book, "The '70s Crash and How to Survive It," published in 1970.

Rachel Kaatmann is a senior in the news-editorial sequence at the Missouri School of Journalism. She is minoring in political science and English and hopes to be a reporter and copyeditor for a daily paper in the Midwest or on the east coast after graduation. She received the Samuel W. Webb Jr. journalism scholarship and has been the clarinet section leader in Marching Mizzou the past three years. Kaatmann spent the summer reporting for the Public Life beat and copyediting at the Columbia Missourian and has had previous internship experiences as a reporter at the Suburban Journals of St. Charles County and as a legislative intern in the Missouri House of Representatives. She loves cats, especially her 20-pound grey and white cat Bosley.