University of Texas Journalism school legend Griff Singer and his wife Evelyn have been honored with dedication of the journalism foyer in the Belo Center for New Media in recognition of their achievements.
Singer was a long-time professor in the journalism school, and also had a distinguished career at the Dallas Morning News and other papers. His wife Evelyn was a long distance runner and former teacher; she died in 2018 after a 14-year battle with cancer.
The dedication of the foyer was made recently, and Singer remarked to those attending that he was “really lucky” to have known his UT family for 50 years.
A fund drive was held in the fall to raise $200,000 to honor the Singers and provide funding to Moody College of Communication for naming of the foyer in their honor.
The fund drive was carried out without the knowledge of Singer, and he was surprised with the announcement at the annual Friends of The Daily Texan dinner.
Key donors were Karen Elliott House and Alejando Junco. More than 70 individual donations were made, and donations are still being accepted.
In his teaching career, all at UT Austin, Singer taught courses in reporting, copyediting, newspaper layout and design. He organized and team-taught the first offering of computer-assisted reporting and later sports writing.
Singer holds bachelor of journalism (1955) and master of arts in communication (1972) from UT Austin.
While an undergraduate student at UT, he was a reporter and day editor for The Daily Texan for two years. Then at 6:30 p.m., five nights a week, he changed from clean shirt and pants and donned dingy jeans, T-shirt and printers apron to work as a printer in the composing room of The Daily Texan.
He has participated in countless seminars and workshops conducted for state, regional and national journalism organizations — the National and Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association, the Texas Press Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. He has been a judge in many state and national journalism competitions and in 1993 was one of 13 jurors selected for the international competition of the Society of News Design. He also has consulted with firms and state agencies on how improve their written communications with the public.
His UT career was centered in the classroom, working with upper division journalism students, helping them master professional skills in writing, editing and design. This is where he fostered long lasting relationships with many students. He also served as associate chairman and head of newspaper studies for many years.
Among his career highlights were helping direct coverage of the assassination of President John Kennedy and the ensuing investigation and the trial of Jack Ruby for the slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin. And in 2001, while working at the Houston Chronicle, he served as the primary line editor and rewrite in the early days of the tragic story of Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children.