Weinberg Honored with $10,000 McIntyre Professorship for Excellence in Teaching

Dean Mills Convergence Journalism Dean

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Columbia, Mo. (June 22, 2006) -- Missouri School of Journalism professor, author and freelance magazine writer Steve Weinberg was recently named the 2006 recipient of the O.O. McIntyre Professorship for excellence in teaching.

In his more than 25 years of service at the School, Weinberg has taught courses in investigative reporting, feature writing, arts journalism, criminal justice journalism, business journalism and the initial newswriting course.

Steve Weinberg

Weinberg was nominated by the School's policy committee and approved by Dean Mills, dean. The professorship carries with it a $10,000 salary supplement for the next academic year.

For Weinberg, however, the honor is more about joining an elite group of educators.

"I know it's a cliché, but when I look at past recipients from our faculty, all of whom I know well and have admired for many years, I'm humbled," Weinberg said of the award.

Graduate student Ginger McFarland endorses the committee's decision to award Weinberg with the McIntyre Professorship. "He knows how to inspire his students both individually and as part of a team," she said. "He makes himself available to help his students, and his enthusiasm for the work is contagious. I am thrilled to have his guidance on my final school project. Surely, no one deserves this honor more than he."

Weinberg's criminal justice reporting class influenced McFarland to focus her master's project on the subject. The product of that class was a story published in the St. Louis (Mo.) Post Dispatch about a 23-year-old murder case. As a bonus for McFarland, Weinberg will also be her mentor through the master's project.

Weinberg graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1970, returning later for a master's degree. He joined the Missouri School of Journalism faculty in 1978 as director of its Washington, D.C., reporting program. In 1983, he moved to Columbia, Mo., to serve as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., a grassroots nonprofit organization with thousands of members dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting. Weinberg stepped aside as IRE executive director in 1990 to spend more time with his family, but continues to contribute to IRE's magazine as a writer and copyeditor.

Today, he is an accomplished magazine and newspaper freelancer and book author. His books include a guide to journalism in Washington, D.C. ("Trade Secrets of Washington Journalists," Acropolis, 1981), a biography of Armand Hammer (Little, Brown, 1989), a guide to reading and writing biography ("Telling the Untold Story," University of Missouri Press, 1992), and "The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigator's Guide to Documents and Techniques," published by St. Martin's Press and commissioned by Investigative Reporters and Editors, 1996. Weinberg is currently writing a biography of Ida Tarbell under contract to W.W. Norton and the centennial history of the Missouri School of Journalism, commissioned by Dean Mills and under contract to the University of Missouri Press.

The professorship is named after O.O. McIntyre, one of the most widely known New York columnists during the 1920s and 1930s. His column, "New York Day by Day," was syndicated to 508 newspapers in every state, Canada and Mexico. Born in Plattsburg, Mo., McIntyre was raised in Gallipolis, Ohio, where he got his start in newspapers as a reporter for $5 a week.

McIntyre died in 1938, and his widow left part of his estate to the Missouri School of Journalism. In her will, she established the O.O. McIntyre Postgraduate Writing Fellowship to help aspiring writers and the O.O. McIntyre Professorship to recognize outstanding educators.

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