A longtime Longhorn expert and sports writer (50+ years). A veteran of the early days of digital publishing. A photographer turned philanthropist who works on life-changing projects worldwide for those in need. One of the nation’s highest-ranking aviation experts, a regular adviser to the Secretary of Transportation and the White House. A long-time Dallas TV news journalist now an award-winning independent filmmaker. And, a political advisor, reform advocate, media columnist and television producer who is creator, executive producer and co-host of Showtime’s Emmy-nominated documentary series “The Circus”. A former member of the UT Board of Regents and glass-breaking female […]
Read more →A $25,000 grant from an Austin journalist and her mother, a 104-year-old former journalist, has provided a significant boost to fully endow the S. Griffin Singer Scholarship, created recently by Friends of The Daily Texan, Inc. The donation is from former Daily Texan staffer and Austin journalist Jo Clifton and her mother, Loretta Diggs Pendergraft. Jo is a respected Texas journalist and lawyer, currently serving as Political Editor of the Austin Monitor and is a former member of The Daily Texan staff with a Bachelor of Journalism degree. She has worked at the El Paso Times and the Austin American-Statesman and earned […]
Read more →S. Griffin Singer, respected Texas journalist and beloved former UT journalism professor, has been honored with an annual scholarship to be awarded in his name to a staff member of The Daily Texan. The $2,000 annual grant will come from Friends of The Daily Texan, Inc., a non-profit established in 2013 to provide support for The Daily Texan and its staff. The addition of this scholarship brings the total awarded to 11 Texan staffers to $15,000 from the Friends group and its partner donors. The grant program has grown from 1 recipient in 2018 to 11 in 2022. “The naming […]
Read more →Daily Texan veteran Gaylon Finklea Hecker and co-author Marianne Odom have been honored with the Yellow Rose of Texas Award for their contribution to the pereservation of Texas history. The award was presented at the Capitol by state Reps. Donna Howard and Steve Allison. Finklea Hecker and Odom are co-authors of Growing Up in the Lone Star State: Notable Texans Remember Their Childhoods, a series of interviews with 47 notable Texans between 1981 and 2018. Their efforts were awarded in the category of significant contribution to the preservation of Texas history. Published by the Briscoe Center for American History at […]
Read more →Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, a a Daily Texan staffer and Managing Editor in 2000, is part of The New York Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. The Times’ project was described by the judges: “For an ambitious project that quantified a disturbing pattern of fatal traffic stops by police, illustrating how hundreds of deaths could have been avoided and how officers typically avoided punishment.” Overall, The New York Times won three Pulitzer Prizes this year and was named as a finalist five more times when awards were announced on May 9. The New York Times shared comments from […]
Read more →Samantha Ketterer, Staff writer The Houston Chronicle The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board on May 9 won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing for a series on voter suppression in Texas. The top honor was awarded to writers Lisa Falkenberg, Michael Lindenberger, Joe Holley and Luis Carrasco. Mostly published in a series called, “The Big Lie,” their winning work examined and debunked GOP-driven falsehoods about voter fraud that have persisted for decades. Falkenberg is a journalism graduate of the University of Texas and a former staffer at The Daily Texan. “Our editorial team is committed to journalism excellence each and every […]
Read more →Editor’s Note: Richard Cole is a respected and internationally known educator and journalist who traces his background to The Daily Texan at the University of Texas at Austin, where he served two terms as Managing Editor. For 26 years he served as dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cole is a new member of The Daily Texan Hall of Fame. As part of that recognition, a colleague and longtime friend from his days at UT asked him to record some of his memories of student journalism at The […]
Read more →Not able to attend the annual Friends of The Daily Texan Hall of Fame dinner on April 8? Please consider sponsoring a Texan staffer to attend. You may sponsor a student or register to attend here: https://friendsdailytexan.wildapricot.org/event-4702996 The April 8 Friends of The Daily Texan Hall of Fame dinner will honor distinguished “graduates” of The Daily Texan, including a nationally-known medical reporter/podcaster, a decades-long columnist and expert on Texas politics, three Pulitzer Prize winning photographers, two Washington Post senior staffers – one Managing Editor of diversity and inclusion, and the second an expert on Wall Street and government programs to save […]
Read more →David T. López of Houston has been selected as one of five recipients of the 2022 Texas Bar Foundation’s Outstanding 50 Year Lawyer Award. The award recognizes attorneys whose practice has spanned 50 years or more and who adhere to the highest principles and traditions of the legal profession and service to the public. David T. López is an international and domestic arbitrator and mediator in Houston. Born and raised in Laredo, he received a journalism degree from The University of Texas and was a newspaper reporter before attending South Texas College of Law Houston while working full-time as a labor union representative. He graduated first […]
Read more →The epic migration of hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles to the U.S. is the subject of a new oral history book by David Powell, who served as editor of The Daily Texan in 1972-1973. The book, Ninety Miles and a Lifetime Away: Memories of Early Cuban Exiles, tells the story of the 600,000 Cubans who came to the U.S. in two massive waves in the first fifteen years after Fidel Castro assumed power on the island in 1959. Most exiles arrived with only a few clothes and pocket money and without visas, but the government let them enter the country anyway. […]
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