Missouri School of Journalism Presents 2003 Honor Medals

The Missouri Honor Medal
The Missouri Honor Medal

Columbia, Mo. (Aug. 22, 2003) — The Missouri School of Journalism will present the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism on Friday, Sept. 5, in the Reynolds Alumni and Visitor Center on the Columbia campus.

The Missouri School of Journalism has awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism annually since 1930. More than 425 distinguished journalists, advertising and public relations practitioners, business people, institutions and media organizations have been recipients of this prestigious award.

Medalists will present master classes to students and faculty on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 4-5.

Following are the 2003 medalists.

  • The Advertising Council, Inc. is a private, non-profit organization with a 60-year history of marshaling volunteer talent from the advertising and media industries to deliver critical messages to the American public. The Ad Council has produced thousands of public service campaigns that address the most pressing social issues of the day. Its icons and slogans are woven into the very fabric of American culture, from Smokey Bear’s “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires” and McGruff the Crime Dog’s “Take a Bite Out of Crime,” to the United Negro College Fund‘s “A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste” and “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” The Ad Council has received more than $1 billion in donated advertising for its campaigns each year since 1998.
  • Jim Ellis is chief of correspondents at BusinessWeek in New York. He manages the magazine’s global network of correspondents in 22 domestic and international news bureaus. Ellis started his career at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He joined BusinessWeek in 1980. His writing and managerial talents were recognized by the publication, earning him frequent promotions in the Chicago, Atlanta and New York bureaus. Ellis specialized in covering the airline, aerospace, defense, packaged food and soft drink industries. Ellis is active in many professional organizations and diversity initiatives. He serves as a commentator on finance issues on network and cable stations. Ellis earned his bachelor of journalism degree from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1976.
  • Ifra, based in Darmstadt, Germany, is the world’s leading association for newspaper and media publishing. The organization is a forum of ideas and support in publishing strategies and technologies for more than 2,200 member publishing groups and supplier companies in 70 countries. Its activities include development and operation in the United States of the Newsplex prototype micro-newsroom for demonstration, training and research in convergent news-handling technologies and techniques. Ifra was founded in 1961 as a research association to support European publishers introducing color in newspapers. It has since broadened its scope to include an annual international exhibition called IfraExpo dedicated to newspaper technology, a yearlong schedule of industry-focused seminars and symposia, consulting services and a monthly magazine published in six languages. The work of Ifra is monitored by a global board of directors.
  • Texas Monthly chronicles life in Texas, reporting on vital issues such as politics, the environment, industry and education. Michael Levy is its founder and publisher. Now in its thirtieth year of publication, Texas Monthly has a circulation of 300,000 and is read by more than two million people each month — one out of seven Texas adults. The Magazine Publishers of America in 1999 gave Levy the Henry Johnson Fisher Award, the magazine industry’s highest honor, in recognition of the publication’s high editorial quality. Levy is a member of the State Bar of Texas and the World Presidents’ Organization. Before founding Texas Monthly, Levy worked for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, United Press International, Philadelphia Magazine and the Texas State Senate.
  • The St. Louis American is Missouri’s most widely-read weekly newspaper targeted to African Americans, publishing more than 68,000 copies every week and distributing to more than 750 locations throughout the city. The American gives African Americans in the St. Louis metropolitan area a credible voice. Nearly half the black households in this bi-state area rely on the American for important and relevant information about news, religion, entertainment, sports, health care and other topics from an African-American perspective. The paper won the National Newspaper Association‘s Russwurm Award in 2002 as the number one African-American newspaper in the United States. This marked the fourth time in the past ten years that the American was named the nation’s best for journalistic excellence by its peers.
  • Margaret Steber is an internationally-known documentary photographer and former assistant managing editor for photography and features at The Miami Herald. Under Steber’s guidance, the paper was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature photography and the paper won a Pulitzer for its photographic and reporting coverage of the Elian Gonzalez story in 2002. Her clients include The New York Times Magazine, The London Sunday Times, Newsweek and many other American and European magazines. Steber’s personal projects have included coverage of a guerilla war in Zimbabwe, coverage in Cuba since 1982, including 50 visits to the island, and coverage of events in Haiti since the demise of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. Her achievements have earned her two major grants and she has won many major awards for her photography.

Updated: September 2, 2020

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