Eleven former staffers of The Daily Texan were honored and a new, endowed scholarship for a Texan staffer was announced at the recent annual awards dinner of Friends of The Daily Texan, Inc. on the University of Texas-Austin campus.
Take a look at the photo gallery from the event – http://www.friendsofthedailytexan.org/texan-hall-of-fame-awards-2017/ – and read below about those honored.
During the awards dinner, the Friends announced a $25,000 grant to Moody College of Communication to establish an annual $1,500 scholarship for a deserving student journalist who works on The Texan.
The Friends group – a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, also announced start of a fund-raising campaign to further extend the scholarship by raising the amount of the award and/or adding additional scholarships to deserving Texan staffers.
Make your year-end donation here: – http://www.friendsofthedailytexan.org/donations/ . Mark in comments box “Texan scholarship” and we’ll make sure it is applied to the Texan student scholarship fund.
This year’s 11 inductees are, by category:
Hall of Fame
• Sam Blair, Dallas Morning News, sportswriter, editor and columnist for 41 years.
• Berke Breathed, Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist and creator of “Bloom County,” “Outland” and “Opus.”
• Skeeter Hagler, first Texan photographer to win a Pulitzer Prize, for his series documenting the Western cowboy.
• Shirley Strum Kenny, a literary scholar, author, teacher and university president.
• Frank Luksa, first with the Dallas Times Herald then Dallas Morning News, he was “the” expert on the Dallas Cowboys, covering them from their formation in 1960 until his retirement in 2004.
• Robert Rodriguez, producer, director, screenwriter, editor, composer for numerous films and television series, including “El Mariachi”, “Desperado,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” and “Sin City.”
• Texas Earnest “Tex” Schramm, the general manager of the Dallas Cowboys from 1960 to 1989, regarded as one of the most influential executives in the history of professional sports.
• Senator Judith Zaffirini, the first Hispanic woman elected to the Texas Senate, second in seniority, highest-ranking woman and Hispanic in the Senate; has received nearly 900 awards for her legislative, public service and professional accomplishments.
The Griff Singer Award
• Richard Finnell, member of Shiva’s Headband when the group recorded “Take Me to the Mountains,” a 1969 release on Capitol Records that was one of the first major-label releases to come out of Austin; later, a distinguished journalism career, with12 years as Texan adviser.
The Rising Star Award
• Bobby Blanchard runs The Texas Tribune’s social media channels, following his first job out of school at the Dallas Morning News as a reporting fellow, covering Texas politics and breaking news.
• Hayley Fick is the social media manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where she works on social media strategy, video productions and live coverage of human spaceflight missions.