Died Aug. 14, 2022 Paul Joel Burka Austin Paul Burka, a long-time Texas Monthly editor and writer, died Sunday, Aug. 14. Burka got his start at The Daily Texan. Long-time friend Hugh Rice Kelly remembers Paul’s days at The Texan: “Paul was legendary at the Daily Texan not only for the quality but also for the length of his football articles. This generated astonishment by the printers on one occasion, when they informed Paul that his article was eight inches too long: “Cut the first eight [para]graphs,” Paul said, without even looking up.” Below is an article from The Texas […]
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 →From Moody College of Communication David Ryfe is the Director of and Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at The University of Texas at Austin. During his career, he has published widely in the areas of presidential communication, political communication, public deliberation, and the history and sociology of news. These days his work mostly concerns the ongoing disruption of American journalism. His book, Can Journalism Survive? (Polity, 2012) presents the most sustained ethnographic study of American newsrooms in a generation. His answer to the question raised in the book’s title is that journalism is and will survive but will adapt […]
Read more →Died June 30, 2022 Albuquerque 85 Edwin Strode Hughes, 85, a former sports editor of The Daily Texan and former Dallas newsman and corporate public relations manager, passed away on Thursday, June 30. He had lived in Albuquerque for the past eight years and spent more than 60 years in public relations and advertising, including 25 years with Southwestern Bell Telephone and the AT&T Bell System. Known by his friends as Eddie, he was a native of Austin, Texas, the son of Frank Miller and Lorine Mitchell Hughes, born on October 6, 1936 along with his twin brother, Mitchell Sample […]
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 →Died June 25, 2022 Seguin 71 Jeanne Barbara Janes, APR, a veteran public relations executive and former broadcaster, died Saturday, June 25, in Seguin, Texas, after a long illness. She was 71. Her last two weeks were marked by an avalanche of birthday cards, flowers and gifts from friends, family, colleagues, former clients and mentees. Born June 9, 1951, in Pennsylvania, she was named for her mother’s mother. Her family moved to Houston in the 1960s, and she graduated from Westbury High School in 1969. After a brief stint at the University of Houston, she transferred to the University […]
Read more →Died Jan. 18, 2022 38 Corpus Christi She worked on The Texan 2004-06 as a general reporter senior reporter, associate news editor, associate editor and news editor. After graduation, she was an environment and health reporter for The Houma Courier and The Thibodaux Daily Comet newspapers in southern Louisiana. Then she was a marketing and communication specialist at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and communication manager for the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Read more →Died Sept. 13, 2021 Pancreatic cancer Dallas She worked on The Texan 1970-72 as a reporter who became part of a four-member team covering state politics and doing investigative work. She was elected to The Daily Texan Hall of Fame. She spent most of her career at The Dallas Morning News, where, after starting as a general-assignment reporter, she became food editor and restaurant critic. After leaving The News, she was a fundraiser for the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Read more →Died Aug. 18, 2021 Complications of a heart attack Joe Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas and one of America’s most outstanding war journalists, died Aug. 18 in North Carolina at the age of 79. If you don’t know Joe, you may recall his book, “We Were Soldiers Once – And Young,” co-authored with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore. The book was turned into a movie of the same name, starring Mel Gibson and Samuel Elliott, and focusing on the first major battle during the Vietnam War. Joe was a journalist trying to get a better look at the real war, […]
Read more →Died April 10, 2021 Brain inflammation Houston He was a columnist for The Texan in the early 1960s. After graduating with a degree in philosophy, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology at Princeton University. He became a scholar of voting rights and co-founded Rice University’s sociology department. He spent his life advocating for racial equality, social justice and voting rights, and was often sought out by legislators and lawyers for his expertise. Davidson’s scholarly work was cited in several court opinions around the country. In the early 1990s, Davidson teamed up with political scientist and University of California […]
Read more →