Lorraine Branham, former director of the school of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin from 2002 to 2008, died April 2. Below is her obituary from The New York Times.
April 11, 2019
Ms. Branham helped her gain a sense of self-worth and also helped carve a path for her that kept her in the program, Ms. Davis said. Now, at 22, she has already started her own company, CLLCTVE, which helps creative college students find careers, and is about to graduate.
“She advocated for me in ways that made me feel seen, heard and valued,” Ms. Davis said in an email.
Ms. Davis is but one of hundreds of students who turned to Ms. Branham at crucial points in their lives, and to whom Ms. Branham gave direction and encouragement. When Ms. Branham died on April 2 at 66, Ms. Davis said, she understood the meaning of the word “legacy” for the first time.
Most educators dream of making a difference in the lives of their students. As the first woman and first person of color to lead the Newhouse School, Ms. Branham took particular interest in serving as a mentor. She also focused on diversifying the faculty and helping the school keep pace in a fast-changing media world.
She became dean at a turbulent time for the news media, as the old business models for newspapers were breaking down and broadcast and cable television were being upended by streaming services.
“Despite declining student interest in journalism as a career path, she nurtured the newspaper, magazine, broadcast news and photojournalism programs so that they were not lost in a sea of entertainment, advertising and public relations,” David Rubin, her predecessor as dean, wrote last week in a tribute to her in The Post-Standard of Syracuse. She was, he said, “the right dean at the right time.”
Hub Brown, the school’s associate dean of research, creativity, international initiatives and diversity, said in a telephone interview that Ms. Branham was “all about getting us to embrace the future.”
“When Apple came out with iPads, she got the faculty iPads and said, ‘Work with this and figure out what we can do with it,’ ” Mr. Brown said. “She saw digital disruption everywhere, and she made sure our facilities were state of the art.”
She was also determined to make the school more diverse. Amy Falkner, now the acting dean, said that during Ms. Branham’s tenure the percentage of faculty members of color increased to 25 percent from 17 percent, and the percentage of women on the faculty increased to 45 percent from 35 percent. A quarter of the student body is now people of color, and two-thirds of the students are women.
Lorraine Elizabeth Green was born on Dec. 7, 1952, in Philadelphia, to Jesse Williams, a tavern owner, and Leona Green. Her parents split up when she was young, and she was raised by her mother and her stepfather, Henry Walls, a mechanic. She was the oldest of nine children on her mother’s side and the oldest of four on her father’s.
She was married twice, first to Norris Branham, with whom she had a son, and then to Melvin Williams, whom she met at the Atlanta airport in 1991 when she sat down right next to him at a bank of otherwise unused pay phones. She did not change her surname when she married Mr. Williams.
Ms. Branham, who lived outside Syracuse, died of uterine cancer at a hospital in Rochester, her sister Annette Walls-McLaurin said.
In addition to her sister, she is survived by her husband; her son, Norris; and a granddaughter. She is survived on her mother’s side by her sisters Connie Walls-Presley, Henretta Ladson, Carol Ann Walls and Leona Walls, and her brothers Henry Jr., Averell and Vincent Walls. On her father’s side, she is survived by her sisters Elaine and Gisell Williams and her brother Kenneth Williams.
An early influence on her was Ed Bradley, the longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent, who started out as a public-school teacher in Philadelphia and was her sixth-grade teacher. They stayed in touch, and, seeing that she was a good writer and curious about current affairs, he encouraged her to pursue a career in journalism.
After she graduated from Overbrook High School in Philadelphia she remained in the city to attend Temple University, where she majored in radio, television and film, graduating in 1976. She was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford in 1985-86.
Ms. Branham began her reporting career with The Philadelphia Tribune in 1976, then moved to other reporting and editing jobs at The Courier-Post in Camden, N.J., The Philadelphia Bulletin and The Baltimore Sun before joining The Philadelphia Inquirer as an editor in 1987. She rose through the newspaper’s management ranks, including stints as New Jersey editor and associate managing editor for features.
As New Jersey editor, Ms. Branham often represented The Inquirer at business and civic functions and lamented that she usually stood out as the only person of color — “like flies in buttermilk,” she used to say, according to Daniel R. Biddle, who was her deputy in New Jersey.
“She said it with a weariness and thick skin and humor,” Mr. Biddle, who is white, said in an email. “She used the same tone when politicians or other people would walk into the New Jersey bureau and see her and see me, and say to her, ‘Can I talk to your boss?’ And Lorraine would say in that same voice, ‘I am the boss.’ ”
She left The Inquirer in 1996 to become executive editor of The Tallahassee Democrat in Florida; she was the first woman and first African-American in that position. She then moved to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was assistant to the publisher from 2000 to 2002.
That was her last newspaper job before she turned to academia. She was director of the school of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin from 2002 to 2008, when she became dean at the Newhouse School. She was chosen from a field of 300 applicants.
At Syracuse, Ms. Branham led an $18 million fund-raising campaign and created the Newhouse Studio and Innovation Center, which includes the Dick Clark Studios and the Alan Gerry Center for Media Innovation. During her tenure, the school established the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, the Peter A. Horvitz Endowed Chair in Journalism Innovation and the Newhouse Sports Media Center. She also helped establish satellite campus programs in New York and Los Angeles.
In a statement, Donald Newhouse, son of the school’s founder, said that Ms. Branham had taken “a great school and with a monumental effort remolded it to keep it relevant to a world that is constantly in flux.”