The 3,300-member association last week selected Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts as its Journalist of the Year for his work in 2007. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist is a visiting professor at the College.

NABJ also named the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune’s Sarah Hoye as its Emerging Journalist of the Year. Hoye earned her master of journalism degree in 2003 from the College.

The Special Honors are among the most-coveted annual awards given by NABJ. The awards will be formally presented July 26 at the NABJ Salute to Excellence Gala that will be part of the Unity: Journalists of Color convention in Chicago.

Journalist of the Year is given to a black journalist who has distinguished himself or herself during the year with work that was extraordinary in depth, scope or significance to people in the African diaspora. Pitts was recognized as a widely respected columnist whose strength and background show through his columns, which “speak to those silenced by poverty, violence and discrimination,” in the words of NABJ President Barbara Ciara.

The Emerging Journalist of the Year recognizes a black journalist with fewer than five years of experience whose work displays a commitment to NABJ’s goal of outstanding achievement by black journalists and to providing balanced coverage of the black community and society at large.

Hoye, who had already held jobs at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before moving to Tampa, was honored for her exceptional work and for her abilities in multimedia reporting, which have made a great impact on her newsroom and on NABJ.

The association said that at a time when diversity in newsrooms is being shunted aside for the bottom line, the awards are not only important for the individual winners but also to recognize their voices and craft in a dwindling newsroom.

Founded in 1975, NABJ is the largest organization of journalists of color in the nation. It is headquartered at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Friends,

Our associate dean, Don Heider, has been named the founding dean of a new School of Communication at Loyola University of Chicago.

As dean, Don will be charged with pulling together what are now disparate departments (journalism, communication, public relations and advertising) into a cohesive, stand-alone school. He will report to Loyola’s provost. The new school will be housed in a spectacular new facility, now under construction, in downtown Chicago near Water Tower Place.

It’s a wonderful opportunity for Don, who in two years has done much to help keep our school moving forward and has made many connections to related disciplines around campus. As much as we will miss him, it’s another feather in the cap of a school that is fast becoming known as a cradle of deans.

Loyola’s announcement can be found at: http://luc.edu/president/letters/soc_dean.html.

I will be back in touch with you soon to discuss the steps we’ll take to bridge this opening. For now, please join me in congratulating Don and his family on this great opportunity.

Tom

Woodhouse won for her story on the sexual assaults of two women in College Park in one morning, attacks that police believed were related to a dozen assaults and peeping Tom incidents over the preceding year.

Police had informally named the attacker “the cuddler,” since he has cuddled with or kissed some of his victims while they were sleeping.

Woodhouse’’s story appeared in the March 4, 2008, edition of The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper on campus. Her winning story was selected from 72 entries from 43 universities across the nation.

The Hearst Journalism Awards, sometimes referred to as the Pulitzers of collegiate journalism, are conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication and are fully funded and administered by the W. R. Hearst Foundation. The program consists of six monthly writing competitions, three photojournalism competitions, four broadcast news competitions, and one multimedia competition, with Championship finals in all divisions (except multimedia).

The Carnegie Foundation says this is the fourth year its Scholars will focus on Islam - a total of 91 honored over that time span. The 2008 Scholars are drawn from a number of disciplines and represent public universities, liberal arts colleges and traditional research universities like the University of Maryland. Patricia L. Rosenfield leads the Carnegie Scholars Program. She says, “America’s discourse on Islam will benefit from the Scholars’ enthusiastic quest to transform complex information into useful, structured knowledge. Their superb scholarship is often daring, always accessible and truly public.” Rosenfield said that emerging and established scholars alike are encouraged to orient their writing and speaking beyond purely academic audiences.

The Carnegie Scholars program was established in 1999 to “provide financial and intellectual support to writers, analysts and thinkers addressing some of the most critical research questions of our time.”

Read the UM Newsdesk Q&A with Prof. Moeller.

Read the College release and tributes to Prof. Gurevitch here.

The first place winners were:

General News Reporting: Kate Prahlad/CNS “Rural areas still expected to grapple with dial-up”

Sports Writing: Adi Joseph/DBK “Soccer match marred by late-game brawl”

Radio News Reporting: Eric Schaffer/Terp Weekly Edition “Good Samaritan”

Radio Feature: Becca Newell/Terp Weekly Edition “Hookah”

Radio Newscast: Terp Weekly Edition

Television General News Reporting: Lauren Effron/MD Newsline “Takoma Metro Package”

Television Feature: Dawn Cherie White/MD Newsline “Riversdale Slave History”

Television Feature Photography: Robert Richardson/MD Newsline “Rowing Commuter”

Online News Reporting: Arelis Hernandez, Rachel Mauro & Carrie Dindion/MD Newsline “UMD’s Neighbors: Towns in Flux”

Best Affiliated Web Site: Maryland Newsline Staff

All first place winners will advance to the national round of judging, which takes place next month.

Second and Third Place Winners were also named in the following categories.

General News Reporting:
• Second Place: Rick Docksai, University of Maryland, “Teacher/student ratio falls as funds grow”
• Third Place: Kristi Tousignant, University of Maryland, “University officials under fire”

Feature Writing:
• Second Place: Kristi Tousignat, University of Maryland, “Ashes to Ashe”

Editorial Cartooning:
• Second Place: Michael O’Brien, University of Maryland

Best All-Around Daily Student Newspaper (published at least 4 times per week):
• Second Place: Staff, University of Maryland, “The Diamondback”

Radio News Reporting:
• Second Place: April Fehling, University of Maryland, “Election Day”
• Third Place: Walter Storholt, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Distracted Driving”

Radio Features:
• Second Place: Shira Yudkoff, University of Maryland, “ROTC”

Radio In-Depth Reporting:
• Second Place: Erin Ruberry, University of Maryland, “Homelessness”
• Third Place: Yuk-Hang Ng, University of Maryland, “Going to Waste”

Radio Sports Reporting:
• Third Place: Heather Bartholomew, University of Maryland, “Paintball”

Television Breaking News:
• Second Place: Dawn Cherie White, University of Maryland, “Immigrant Social Security”

Television General News Reporting:
• Third Place: Matilda Bode, University of Maryland, “Medicaid Reform”

Television Feature:
• Second Place: Matilda Bode, University of Maryland, “Disabilities”

Television In-Depth Reporting:
• Third Place: George A. Jackson, IV, University of Maryland, “Immigrant Pay”

Television Sports Reporting:
• Third Place: Danny Rubin, University of Maryland, “D.C. Boxer”

Television News Photography:
• Second Place: Dawn Cherie White, University of Maryland, “Windsor Church Fire”
• Third Place: Erin Brennan, University of Maryland, “Pedestrian Safety”

Television Sports Reporting:
• Second Place: Max Brodsky & Toby Hershkowitz, University of Maryland, “Triathlete”

Online News Reporting:
• Second Place: Arelis Hernandez & David Byers, University of Maryland, “Race relations in wake of noose incident at UMD”

Online Feature Reporting:
• Second Place: Carrie Dindino, University of Maryland, “Transforming a West Baltimore Neighborhood”

Online In-Depth Reporting:
• Second Place: Diego Mantilla, Hortense M. Barber, Sylvie Safren & Andy Zieminski, University of Maryland, “Homeless in Maryland”
• Third Place: The Capital News Service & Maryland Newsline Staffs, University of Maryland, “Special Session: Budget Crisis”

Complete Region 2 Mark of Excellence results are available on the SPJ Web site.

Kaur becomes the seventh CNS reporter since 2000 to win a finalist spot in the student category of the annual IRE contest, which is open to students nationwide.

Kaur’s stories, more than a year in the making, showed that while the state’s Attorney Grievance Commission swiftly disbarred attorneys faced with the most grievous complaints, overall disciplinary actions were small and falling fast.

Her reporting also showed that many attorneys who repeatedly cheated, lied, stole or abandoned their clients did so for years without suffering any real consequence. Even a man who killed his client’s wife’s kitten in a microwave was still allowed to practice.

Kaur spent almost a year getting the attorney discipline data from the commission, which initially denied keeping such records and then admitted it had the data but claimed it was private and confidential.

After repeated conversations, Public Information Act requests and meetings, the commission finally agreed to release a copy of its file of sanctioned attorneys, which Kaur was able to turn into the heart of her stories.

She found that a profession that polices itself does very little disciplining of its own people. Kaur reported that the number of lawyers sanctioned by the state has fallen sharply in the last decade, with only 57 of the state’s 33,018 lawyers disbarred, suspended or reprimanded in the last fiscal year.

Her data also showed that less than a quarter of all complaints against lawyers were even investigated. Nearly half of the investigated complaints were “closed administratively” and only a third of the remaining cases received any kind of discipline.

After fighting Kaur for months over access to its records, the commission’s data custodian ultimately asked Kaur for a copy of her database and told her it would be used as the commission’s new internal database.

Kaur was a reporter last fall in the Washington, D.C., bureau of Capital News Service, the College’s student-staffed wire service with bureaus in Washington and Annapolis that feed a daily digest of news to clients around the state. She earned her master’s degree in journalism in December, and returned to edit SikhNN.com, a Sikh-oriented news site that she founded.

Read the award winning story, “Story Behind Boom” on The Diamondback Web site.

“Tom Kunkel’s leadership has had a profound impact on the College of Journalism. The accomplishment and momentum that he leaves behind will continue for years to come,” said University President C. D. Mote, Jr. “While we are sorry to see Tom go, it is satisfying to see him use his talent and energy at another level at St. Norbert College. We wish Tom all the best when he takes over the reins this fall.”

Kunkel was named dean of the Merrill College in 2000. Since then he has lead the school in curricular changes, launched a $45 million capital campaign and spearheaded a project to build a $30 million new home for the College, Knight Hall, which will break ground in May.

“St. Norbert College is widely regarded as one of the top liberal arts institutions in America, and I am thrilled and humbled by this opportunity,” said Kunkel. “At the same time, I am melancholy about leaving the best job I’ve ever had, a great journalism school at a great university. I will never be able to repay Maryland for what it has given me and my family.”

Under Kunkel’s leadership, Merrill continued its rise in national prominence started by his predecessor, and is now internationally recognized as one of the best journalism schools in the United States.

In 2001, after a $10 million gift from Annapolis Capital publisher Philip Merrill, the school began an era of rapid program expansion: it has nearly tripled the amount of scholarship aid given to students, began a program of significant reinvestment in modern, professional-caliber equipment, and hired some of the nation’s best academics and professionals. He brought the tally of Pulitzer Prize winners on staff to seven – the most of any journalism school in the country.

Merrill was selected as one of eight prestigious schools in the nation to participate in the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Journalism Initiative to transform journalism education. The college now operates training and exchange programs on three continents and is home to nine professional programs and centers including American Journalism Review and the National Association of Black Journalists.

Kunkel has also become a leader in the field of journalism education, serving as the president of the Association of Schools in Journalism and Mass Communication and chair of the national accrediting committee of journalism and communication schools. He was named the Top Journalism Administrator by the Scripps Howard Foundation last year.

A respected journalist and author, Kunkel has written five books including the critically acclaimed “Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker.”

Provost Nariman Farvardin said the succession plan for Kunkel will be announced in the coming days.

St. Norbert College is a Catholic liberal arts college founded by the Norbertine Order in 1898. In 2008, U.S. News and World Report named the school one of “Best Liberal Arts” schools in its annual “America’s Best Colleges” issue.

To our faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends,

I am writing to tell you about an important development in my life and career, one that I convey to you with a mixture of excitement and melancholy.

It is being announced today that I will be the next president of St. Norbert College, an outstanding, Catholic liberal arts institution in De Pere, Wisconsin, just outside Green Bay. With about 2,000 undergraduate students, St. Norbert is consistently ranked one of the best liberal arts colleges in the Midwest, and it recently was elevated to a top national school by U.S. News and World Report. St. Norbert was founded in 1898 by the Norbertine order of Catholic priests, and Norbertines continue to oversee the college and teach on the faculty.

I will begin at St. Norbert in July.

Of course, that means that my time at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism will conclude after my eighth year as dean. It has been an eventful and I think altogether positive time, one in which we built on the solid foundation of our predecessors and made this journalism school into one of the best in the nation. In May we break ground on beautiful Knight Hall, which will allow us to march confidently into the media’s brave new digital world.

I will have more to say in the coming weeks and months about all that. For now, let me just add that this opportunity sought me out, rather than vice versa, and after much contemplation I decided that the chance to direct such a respected liberal arts university was simply too rare to pass up.

But it will mean giving up the best job I’ve ever had, surrounded by the best people I’ve ever worked with, a school with faculty and students who are the envy of all my peers.

Provost Farvardin will soon announce his intentions in regard to a search for my replacement.

Deb and I will never forget this opportunity or your friendship.

Tom