Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Healy, an 1971 alumnus and current Board of Visitor member, won the Distinguished Writing Award for Editorial Writing presented by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Currently the editorial page editor for the Orlando Sentinel, Healy won for a five-part series of editorials called “Florida’s Shame” on how the laws and policies in Florida for managing growth are a sham.

Read the release and see the other ASNE winners here.

Visiting Professor George Solomon has been named the Shirley Povich Professor, Dean Thomas Kunkel announced.

The endowed professorship commemorates Washington Post sports columnist Shirley Povich, one of sports’ most influential voices during an extraordinary 75-year span. Povich died in 1998.

“The appointment of George Solomon as our first Povich Professor is a perfect fit,” Kunkel said. “George was Shirley’s protégé and friend, and he shared Shirley’s values and passion for cultivating the next generation of sports leaders. He was known for nurturing and promoting some of the most important voices in sports journalism. We’re honored that he continues that work here at the Merrill College.”

Read the full release here.

The Philip Merrill College of Journalism sends deepest condolences to the family and friends of sophomore Letters and Sciences major Nicole Schiffman, who was killed in Arizona Saturday.

“Everyone at the Merrill College of Journalism is shaken and terribly saddened by this tragedy,” said Dean Thomas Kunkel from New York. “Our prayers and condolences go out to Nicole’s family and to her friends, many of them students in our program.”

Scripps Doctoral Fellow and a visiting professor Rafael Lorente had Schiffman in his Journalism 201 class:

“Nicole was a joy to have in class,” Lorente said. “Her insight and enthusiasm, as well as her warm smile, will be missed by all of us. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family.”

For complete coverage of this tragedy, see The Diamondback.

Associate Professor Mike Williams was appointed education chair for the Online News Association last week.

The New York-based national organization brings together news writers, producers, designers, editors, photographers and others who produce news for the Internet or other digital delivery systems, as well as academic members and others interested in the development of online journalism. Its primary mission is to ensure the integrity of the news and news sourcing as new technologies of delivery emerge.

Williams will serve as an at-large member of the organization’s board of directors and has pledged to mark his tenure with efforts to give educators a voice in the organization, find ways to bring education (academic and professional) into the important missions of the organization and bring ONA to the local level, particularly in the form of student organizations

The College arranged several discussion sessions Feb. 19 for 17 journalists from Mexico, part of a four-day Study Tour on New Media Trends. The program was organized by the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., and sponsored by the media department of the University of Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico. The participants — representing journalism schools and print and broadcast media in the State of Jalisco, heard presentations by College Associate Dean Don Heider and Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism. They then joined the College’s international Hubert Humphrey Journalism Fellows for a seminar conducted by program director Lucinda Fleeson. The study tour also visited Washingtonpost.com, Voice of America, the U.S. State Department and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting during their stay in D.C. -FQ

Stacy Spaulding, who received her Ph.D. here in 2005, has accepted a position as an assistant professor of communication at Towson University
starting in September.

Stacy is an experienced journalist and teacher, and she has become an outstanding young scholar. Her dissertation on a pioneering woman broadcaster who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era won the top prize for the most outstanding dissertation in journalism history last year from the American Journalism Historians Association.

Stacy now is an associate professor at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park.

The Philip Merrill College of Journalism’s SPJ Chapter is pleased to announce Alicia Shepard (MA 2002) will return to campus, Tuesday, Feb. 27 to talk about her new book, Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate. Everyone is invited to attend the program which is set for 6:30p in Room 2114 in the Journalism Building.

TerPAC and the Society for Professional Journalists are pleased to present Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning, independent Israeli-Arab journalist who has been covering Palestinian issues in the West Bank and Gaza for over two decades. He began his journalism career as a writer for an official PLO newspaper and now writes for the Jerusalem Post, and works frequently with NBC. As a veteran journalist, he has knowledge of the behind-the-scenes action within the PA and other Palestinian organizations and offers a unique perspective on the middle-east and media coverage of it.

Khaled Abu Toameh
Israeli-Arab reporter for the Jerusalem Post
0220 Jimenez Hall – 7pm on Thursday, Feb. 22

“Terp Weekly Edition” took first place in the Radio Newscast Category of the Broadcast Educators Association. This is a first for us with BEA. It comes on the heels of TWE’s winning SPJ’s national Mark of Excellence Award for Outstanding Radio Newscast last fall. In addition to our first place honors, alum Katey Welhouse took a second place in BEA’s Radio Feature Reporting category for her series “Strung Out” which looked at cocaine use on campus.

The show we submitted was for the week of Nov. 13 which included special coverage of the November election, a feature with Johnny Holliday, a report on the Merrill College of Journalism’s sports panel, the first part of a multi-part series on steroid use…along with a trip to Ledo’s after it was named a top place for pizza on Oprah’s show. Andrea Berry was the executive producer, Eric Schaffer the production manager. More than a dozen students had a role in the show.

Two Merrill College students have won awards in this year’s broadcast features competition of the Hearst National Journalism Awards.

Senior Jackie Congedo won 9th place in the TV category, and will be awarded a $500 scholarship. Senior Maja Cholody took 17th place in the radio competition.

The 2006-2007 broadcast news competitions are held in more than 100 member colleges and universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs. The Broadcast News Competition was added in 1988 to the Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program that for 47 years has included writing and news photography competitions, and now offers awards totaling more than $450,000 in scholarships, matching grants and stipends.