2024: Owen Canfield | Jacqueline R. Smith | James H. Smith
2023: Lisa Chedekel | Denise D’Ascenzo
2022*
2021: Jon Lender
2020*
2019: Ken Dixon | John Elliott
2018: Lucy Crosbie
2017: Maureen Croteau | Diane Smith
2016: The 13 charter members of the Connecticut Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists
2015: Cindy Simoneau
2014: Lynne DeLucia
2013: John Long
2012: Edward Cotter Jr. | John Mongillo Jr.
2010: Jerry Dunklee
2008: Robert Estabrook | Tom Monahan | Pat Sheehan
2007: Robert C. Child III | Sherman D. London | Morgan McGinley
2006: Edward Frede | Harold Hornstein
2005: Pat Child | Bohdan Kolinsky
2004: Bart Barnes | Bob Eddy | Reid MacCluggage
ALL OTHER YEARS: Stephen A. Collins | Walt Dibble | Chuck Dixon | Theodore A. Driscoll III | Robin Marshall Glassman | Paul Gough | Robert J. Leeney | Forrest Palmer | Richard Peck | Al Primo | Kenn Venit | Hannah Bunce Watson | Barbara Comstock White | Carter H. White
*No inductee selected
**These entries are not regularly maintained. Some information may be out of date.
2024
Owen Canfield was a U.S. Air Force Korean conflict veteran and a journalist/columnist at the Hartford Courant for decades. A seven-time Connecticut Sportswriter of the Year, Canfield taught sports writing classes at the University of Connecticut and Central Connecticut State University. He was a long-time columnist for the Register Citizen in Torrington, where he also began his career in the 1960s, when the paper was known as the Torrington Register. His work has been celebrated for its warmth, storytelling and focus on the human experience. Canfield died in November 2019.
Jacqueline R. "Jacky" Smith is the ombudsman of Stars and Stripes, the newspaper for the U.S. armed forces and is treasurer of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information. She was the editorial page editor of the News-Times in Danbury and the Norwalk Hour, both Hearst Connecticut Media publications. She began her journalism career as a part-time Hartford Courant correspondent with a high school education. Mid-career she earned a bachelor's in journalism from Southern Connecticut State University, summa cum laude; and a master’s degree in writing with honors from Wesleyan University. She has taught Journalism at the University of Hartford and SCSU.
Smith was a reporter for The Day of New London, where she won first place in the New England AP News Executive Association contest for her investigations into wrongdoing in the management of the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corp. in Groton. She was a business writer and columnist for the New Haven Register. As a reporter at the Record Journal in Meriden, her investigation into the dearth of minority teachers in the Wallingford School district, outlining how officials skipped over Black and Latino candidates, earned her first place in the National Education Writers' annual competition.
She also served as city editor and assistant managing editor at the Record Journal, managing editor of the News-Times and editor of the New Milford Spectrum.
She and her husband, James, also a journalist and a 2024 Hall of Fame inductee, have four daughters.
James H. "Jim" Smith is a retired newspaper editor, past president of the New England Society of Newspaper Editors, a member of the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame, and past president of the nonprofit Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information.
He served as city editor and sports editor of the Hartford Courant, as well as editor of the Connecticut Post, which he led to its first New England Newspaper of the Year Award. He also led The Day of New London, the News-Times of Danbury, the Record Journal of Meriden and the New Britain Herald to their first New England Newspaper of the Year awards.
He received the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award for his columns on the First Amendment, which were published in "Best Newspaper Writing 2003,” released annually by the Poynter Institute. He was also honored by the Academy of New England Journalists with the Yankee Quill Award.
Smith earned his master’s degree in writing from Wesleyan University and has a bachelor's in American history from SUNY Brockport.
2023
Lisa Chedekel made an enduring impact through her fearless reporting. Her work was characterized by relentless coverage of city mayoral administrations and issues affecting residents from all walks of life. As a reporter at the New Haven Register, she showcased a deep commitment to the betterment of her community through her stories.
At the Hartford Courant, Chedekel’s work was nothing short of groundbreaking. She played a pivotal role in the coverage of the CT Lottery Corp. shooting, which ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally, her lead role in the investigation into the military’s flawed mental-health policies led to Congressional hearings and significant policy changes that reduced suicides in combat.
Chedekel’s journalism was recognized with a multitude of awards, including the George Polk and Selden Ring awards, the Worth Bingham Prize from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, and many more. Her dedication to exposing wrongdoing and advocating for positive change was unyielding.
In her later years, Chedekel co-founded C-HIT alongside fellow Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame member Lynne DeLucia. As the lead reporter, Chedekel continued her impactful work by exposing misconduct in nursing homes, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations. Her reporting on prescription abuse among nurses and doctors in Connecticut even led to criminal investigations, highlighting her lasting influence on investigative journalism.
Chedekel died Jan. 12, 2018, at the age of 57.
Denise D’Ascenzo, an eleven-time Emmy Award winner, earned her place among the most revered journalists in the state of Connecticut. Her unwavering dedication to her craft and her incredible talent led to her election to the Silver Circle by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2013. Two years later, she made history as the first woman to be inducted into the Connecticut Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame.
D’Ascenzo’s career spanned an impressive 33 years as the anchor of WFSB Channel 3. Her charismatic presence touched the lives of viewers across the state, making her a beloved and trusted figure in the world of journalism. Her commitment to excellence and numerous accolades are a testament to her exceptional career.
D’Ascenzo died Dec. 7, 2019, at her home in Branford at the age of 61.
2021
Jon Lender worked 48 years at the Hartford Courant. He started as a young correspondent just out of UCONN at the old Willimantic Bureau. He was full time a year later covering Bristol, Southington and Middletown. He moved to the main office in Hartford in 1981 and was assigned to reporting on government agencies and politicians with an emphasis on investigations.
Lender covered the administration of Gov. John Rowland for 8 years. Then he came upon information the governor had taken valuable favors from state contractors. With fellow reporters, Dave Altimari and Edmund H. Mahony, he spent months investigating. The result of those stories led to a 2004 impeachment inquiry of the governor in the legislature. Rowland resigned and was convicted on corruption charges and served time in federal prison.
The governor was not the only politician whose behavior was revealed by Lender’s diligence. From 2008 to 2021 he wrote the “Government Watch” column for the Courant. Some in public life who came under his scrutiny began to use his name as a verb. It was said they had been “Lendered.”
He believes deeply in Freedom of Information. He said:
“The FOI Act was always as basic and useful a tool as a hammer or saw. Submitting a written FOI request not only had legal force — making an official produce documents or be accused of violating the law — but it also showed simply that you meant business and would insist on getting answers.”
Why did he choose journalism? His father, as he grew up in New Jersey, brought home two newspapers a day and he started reading the sports pages every day before he was a teenager. He admired New York columnists like Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill. That first reporting job covering small CT towns paid 25-cents an inch. He says he figured he’d report until he thought of something better to do. It is the reader’s fortune he never did.
2019
Ken Dixon is responsible for political coverage for eight daily newspapers that are part of Hearst Connecticut Media, including the New Haven Register, Connecticut Post, The Norwalk Hour, Danbury News Times, Stamford Advocate, Greenwich Time, the Register-Citizen in Torrington and The Middletown Press.
For 24 years until 2018, he was a one-person state Capitol bureau, first for The Connecticut Post and eventually for the other Hearst papers, as they were acquired, covering public policy, the legislature, state departments and politics, and writing one or two columns a week.
Dixon began his career at the Bridgeport Post and Telegram newspapers in July 1977, after a short stint as the farm editor of a central-Ohio daily. He started his journalism career in the Nutmeg state covering Westport and Norwalk before moving to Bridgeport City Hall in 1983. From 1990 through 1994, he was a full-time columnist for what became the Connecticut Post.
Dixon graduated from Ohio University’s journalism program in 1976. He have won state, regional and national awards for reporting and column-writing and he was recently a National Press Foundation fellow.
In his spare time, Dixon plays soccer in leagues and clubs and he plays the electric mandolin and guitar. Dixon is part of a journalists’ bar band, The Bad Slugs, and wrote an iconic tune about working in newspapers: “Ride the Dinosaur.”
John Elliott holds the distinction of being the longest running radio news anchor in the state of Connecticut with 42 years at 96.5 WTIC.
Elliott knew from when he was a little boy that he wanted to be in the news business. When he was a boy, Elliott’s father bought a miniature reel to reel tape recorder with a microphone, which he used to interview family members on tape. His next door neighbor growing up was legendary disc jockey Bob Steele.
Elliott graduated from Emerson College in 1974. He hoped for a career in television news but was turned down by Channels 3, 8 and 30. When told he should try radio, he had his first radio news job with WCCC with morning host Rusty Potz.
His start with WTIC was as a summer replacement worker where he handled the morning news for Steele, who helped Elliott with his writing and delivery on the air.
Elliott started at WTIC in 1976 before the radio station’s switched from a classical music to a pop music format.
He was part of the station’s popular morning show Craig and Company with Gary Craig. Elliott retired from the radio station in last July.
During his 42 years at the station, Elliott sat on the same chair and after his retirement, he auctioned off the chair, raising $10,000 which was donated to the American Civil Liberties Union. The chair was later donated to Elliott’s alma mater, Wethersfield High School’s Career and Technical Education Department by fellow radio personality Mark “The Shark” Christopher, who was the highest bidder on the chair. He also started a John Elliott Scholarship for the high school.
2018
Lucy Crosbie was a pioneer for women in journalism while helping run her family’s newspaper, The Chronicle in Willimantic, for nearly 60 years. She served as president from 1954 until her death on Jan. 1, 2012, and also served as publisher of the paper until 1992 before handing over the role to her son, Kevin.
She was a prolific writer during her time running the paper, producing thousands of editorials reflecting on events in and around Windham. She was also the first woman to serve as president of a number of boards, including he New England Daily Newspaper Association, The Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association, The Connecticut Editorial Association, and The United Press Newspapers of Connecticut.
Crosbie was also active in the local community, holding positions such as chairman of the Eastern Connecticut State University Foundation, president and a founding member of the Windham Historical Society, and a corporator of Windham Hospital.
2017
Maureen Croteau, chairwoman of the University of Connecticut Journalism Department, is the first woman to lead an academic department in UConn’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and is its longest-serving department head. Last year, the department celebrated its 50th anniversary last year and Croteau has been its leader for the past 34 years.
Croteau arrived in Storrs after more than a decade working as a newspaper reporter and editor in Hartford and Providence. When she accepted the position in 1983, the department had three faculty members and a roomful of manual Underwood typewriters on old oaken desks. In 1985, she set up the department’s first computer lab, one of the first on campus. The department now has eight full-time faculty members, including two Pulitzer Prize winners, serving more than 200 undergraduate majors and pre-majors. Under her direction, the department has become the only nationally accredited journalism program in New England.
Since 1991, Croteau has been a director at The Day, where Publisher Gary Ferrugia calls her, “the conscience of the company in all matters regarding journalism.”
She is a UConn alumna and a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is co-author of two books, and was the 2014 New England Journalism Educator of the Year, chosen by the New England Newspaper and Press Association.
Diane Smith is known by many residents in Connecticut for her years as a reporter and anchor on local television stations. She is an award-winning reporter, anchor, writer, and producer. She has written books, is the producer of events for the Old State House in Hartford, and serves actively on a variety of boards, most recently for the Center for Women in Business at Quinnipiac University, where she was an adjunct years ago.
She recently founded Diane Smith Media and is an independent contractor with the Connecticut Network (CT-N).
2016
The 13 charter members of the Connecticut Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2016, the 50th anniversary of the chapter.
The 13 men — Bob Eddy, Herbert Brucker, Dorman E. Cardell, Williams J. Clew, D. Barry Connelly, Russell G. D’Oench, Norman Fenichel, Frank Hepler, Carl E. Lindstrom, Robert M. Lucas, Arland R. Meade, Laurence A. Silver and Sidney P. Steward — were granted a charter on Feb. 3, 1966 for the Connecticut Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists - Sigma Delta Chi.
Their efforts have had a ripple effect on journalism in the state.
CTSPJ has hosted hundreds of professional development workshops, as well as influential regional conferences to help journalists in the state network and further their careers. Through the Bob Eddy Scholarship Foundation, the board has distributed more than $140,000 in scholarships to Connecticut students since 1981.
Each year since the early 1970s, the board has hosted an Excellence in Journalism contest, with between 800 and 1,000 entries, in order to recognize the work of journalists across the state. The contest raises money for the board operations, including thousands of dollars in donations given to journalism causes. Through their work 50 years ago, these 13 men have had tremendous impact, and will continue to touch the lives of journalists in the state for years to come.
(Bob Eddy, the founding president of the chapter and a former editor and publisher of the Hartford Courant, was already a member of the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame.)
2015
Cindy Simoneau, chair of the Journalism Department at Southern Connecticut State University, and associate professor of journalism, has a career that spans more than 30 years in newspapers and journalism education. Her lasting impact to the Connecticut journalism industry is measured in her work as a reporter, editor, teacher and mentor.
Simoneau started her career in Connecticut journalism in 1980, working as a town news reporter for the Newtown Bee. She moved to the Connecticut Post as a reporter then bureau chief in 1982. Simoneau founded the Post’s WomanWise section in 1991 and was named the assistant managing editor for the newspaper in 1997.
In 1991, Simoneau began work as an adjunct professor. She taught at Quinnipiac University, Fairfield University and Southern Connecticut State University – often all three in the same semester. In 2007, she was hired full-time as a professor in the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University.
Simoneau founded and has served as adviser for CTTeens, a program for high school student journalists at the Connecticut Post, which is now in its 16th year and continuing through Southern Connecticut State University. Many of the program’s graduates have gone on to careers in journalism, business communication, publishing and teaching.
Simoneau’s reach into the Connecticut journalism industry also includes more than three decades of service to the Connecticut SPJ chapter and Board of Directors, where she has served three terms as president, more than a decade as the board’s treasurer and on various committees including nominations, finance, bylaws, scholarship and contest.
Simoneau chairs the SPJ Region 1 Conference Committee, which is planning a Connecticut journalism conference for 2016. She is a four-time winner of the CTSPJ President’s Award, and has won several awards for her reporting and editing.
2014
Lynne DeLucia, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, was inducted into the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame at the CTSPJ annual awards dinner on May 22, 2014.
Tenacity, curiosity and quality have been hallmarks of DeLucia’s more than 40 years in Connecticut journalism.
It started at age 16 in Hamden, covering an inchworm invasion and planning and zoning for the Hamden Chronicle. She moved full-time to the New Haven Register, where she was among a group of female journalists who sued for pay equality in the mid 1970s. The suit was eventually settled out of court, but the goal of equal pay was realized: The wages of women essentially doubled in the Register newsroom.
After becoming city editor of the Register in 1983, DeLucia moved to the Hartford Courant in 1993 to run the New Britain bureau. She became state editor in 1995 and led the Courant’s coverage of the 1998 shooting at the Connecticut Lottery headquarters. Those stories won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news.
She moved up to assistant managing editor, where she urged reporters to explore projects on gender, sex, domestic violence, the impact of the Iraq War on soldiers, and many other topics.
In 2009, DeLucia moved to the digital realm. She co-founded the Connecticut Health I-Team with Lisa Chedekel. The site provides health and safety reporting to 15 media partners in Connecticut. With DeLucia as editor, C-HIT has reached more than one million readers since 2010. Additionally, C-HIT hosts an annual high school journalism camp for students in Connecticut to refine their investigative journalism skills.
“Lynne’s dedication to the craft of journalism — and most importantly to the communities that her work has informed and improved — make her deeply deserving of admission to the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame,” said John Ferraro is his nomination letter for DeLucia.
2013
John Long was a staff photographer for the Hartford Courant for 35 years. He covered everything from political conventions, to golf, to the plight of the homeless and all the local events that defined the Hartford area during the time. He won many awards and was twice named the Connecticut Photographer of the Year. He was awarded the Joseph Sprague Award in 2007, the highest award given by the National Press Photographers Association.
“Photojournalism is a craft and I consider myself to be a journeyman craftsman.” Long said. “Accurate photographs help the members of the public understand the world in which we live, especially on an emotional level.”
Long has been deeply involved in protecting access for Connecticut journalists to news scenes. He was a member of the first and second Connecticut Cameras in the Courts committees that created the rules and monitored the results as Connecticut approved the use of TV and still cameras during court proceedings. He was a founding member of the Media Access Task Force, a group that sought to improve relations with law enforcement in Connecticut. He also served on the media / law committee of the Connecticut Bar Association.
Long’s work has extended beyond Connecticut’s borders. Since 1998, he has been the ethics chairman for the National Press Photographers Association, and he served as its president in 1989-90. He headed the committee that rewrote the NPPA Code of Ethics in the early 2000s.
After retiring from the Courant in 2006, he served as an adjunct professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Previously, he taught part time at Manchester Community College in Manchester for five years. Long lives in Manchester with his wife, Mary. They have three grown daughters.
2012
Edward Cotter Jr., was photographer for the Evening Sentinel and the New Haven Register for more than 55 years, before his death in January 2012. He was 91.
Eddie Cotter set the standard for journalists in the lower Naugatuck Valley. And, he paved the way to make sure the public always got to see what was happening in their communities – including with emergency services.
Several newspaper reporters and editors recalled their time working with Cotter in news articles about his death. Former New Haven Register editor Michael Foley said when Cotter walked into the newsroom late in the day with a photo, it meant one thing ― tear up whatever the editors had planned for the front page.
Cotter’s photos were up close and dramatic. On more than one occasion the editors at the Register had to meet to discuss whether to publish Cotter’s photos.
“It could be raw stuff,” said Foley.
John Ferraro, the state editor at The Hartford Courant, worked with Cotter in the early 1990s at the Register’s Valley bureau. Ferraro said he and Cotter would often run out to cover crashes and fires. At times Cotter would take photos, hand Ferraro the camera to take back to the office, then either step in to fight a fire or drive an ambulance.
“He thought that people had the right to see what was going on in their communities,” Ferraro said. “Part of that was showing what rescue people did.”
The Naugatuck Valley press corps and the community have benefited from the access to emergency services. First responders in the Valley have an expectation that what they do is public, and should be shared with the community. That is a result of Cotter’s influence.
John Mongillo Jr. was an extraordinary newsman. Following his father, John Sr. who was also a news photographer, he shot photos of most major news events in Connecticut during a 40-year career. Hurricane Gloria, the collapse of the Mianus River Bridge, the Stratford Toll Plaza fire are a few examples. He seemed to be everywhere at once.
His contacts were legendary. He knew everyone from beat cops, to major public officials, to regular citizens. And they all called John with stories. He often was at crime scenes before any other reporter or photographer, and in 1980 was credited with negotiating a hostage situation at the East Street branch of the former First Bank in New Haven when a would-be robber wanted to relay his demands through the media. As a result, Mongillo received the police chief’s Citizen Meritorious Service Award.
Former New Haven Register Editor Jack Kramer, who worked with Mongillo for about 30 years, said, “Nobody was more plugged in, nobody knew more cops or firefighters, nobody was faster with information than John Mongillo. He made sure we had the most up-to-date and best information and photographs.”
He also shot thousands of images of less well-known stories and portraits of everyday people in the news.
Mongillo worked at the New Haven Register for 30 years and then became a free lancer. He provided still pictures and video to news outlets around the state and beyond for the rest of his life. He was only 64 when he died.
2010
Jerry Dunklee has been a broadcaster and professor for 45 years. Thirty-two of those years have been in Connecticut.
Jerry worked at WELI Radio in New Haven as a talk show host for more than seven years. During that time his number-one rated evening show delved into topics as wide-ranging as nuclear power to Broadway musicals. He interviewed over 6-thousand people at WELI. He has also filled in as a talk host at WPOP in Hartford and WICC in Bridgeport. Jerry also worked in New York and Boston during his news and talk career.
He started teaching full time in 1985 at Southern Connecticut State University. He has taught thousands of students, many of whom have become career journalists. His students were involved in two major studies of compliance with FOI law at the state and local level. Both studies resulted in national news coverage and more focus on how agencies actually deal with FOI. He, under the mentoring of the late Robin Glassman, led the Journalism Department for nine years.
Jerry has been president, vice president and ethics chair of Connecticut SPJ. Over the years he created dozens of workshops and panels in the state dealing with FOI, Free Press/Fair Trial, Ethics and Investigative Journalism.
He has fought for student First Amendment rights at both the college and high school level.
Jerry has been a member of the National Ethics Committee of SPJ since 1994 and helped write the current Code of Ethics.
He has two grown children, Brady and Caitlin. Brady started a charity to help poor children in Nicaragua and Caitlin works in prison reform in New York.
He served in the Army from 1966 to 1968 as a member of the Bomb Squad.
He just completed his 25th year at Southern.
2008
Robert Estabrook lived several journalism lives. He was best known in Connecticut as the publisher and editor of the Lakeville Journal. He owned the newspaper for 16 years. During that time the Journal covered a number of high profile stories including the 1973 Peter Reilly murder trial. Because of the newspaper’s in-depth coverage, all charges were dropped against the 18-year old who had been accused of killing his mother. For those stories and editorials the paper won the national John Peter Zenger Award for Freedom of the Press.
He also has been active in Freedom of Information issues. But his career extended beyond the boundaries of Connecticut. He was a writer for northern Michigan weeklies and managing editor of the campus newspaper at Northwestern University, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1939. He worked as an editorial writer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He served four years in the Army during World War II and started a U.S. forces newspaper in Brazil. After the war the Washington Post hired him as an editorial writer. He spent 25 years with that storied organization including nine years as a foreign correspondent traveling to 70 countries. He has been a Pulitzer Prize judge and with other New England editors, conducted journalism workshops in India.
Mitchell Pearlman, former director of the CT Freedom of Information Commission, said in part:
"People throughout the United States, and indeed the world, have benefited by his indefatigable leadership in journalism. But we in Connecticut have benefited the most, and the most directly, when he and his wife, Mary Lou, decided to move to Connecticut and buy the Lakeville Journal. They not only made that paper a great weekly newspaper, they became the paradigm for community-based, civic-minded journalism, while ever mindful that their local community is part of a broader statewide, national and international community about which every reader should be well-informed. I’ve had the honor and privilege of knowing and working with Bob for over 35 years. Thus I can say that without doubt, no one during this period has done more for good journalism and good government in Connecticut than Bob Estabrook. He is indeed a hero and much deserving of this recognition.”
Mr. Estabrook died in November 2011. He was 93.
Tom Monahan has spent almost 40 years as a journalist. His career started in radio at stations in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has been at WVIT-TV for 30 years. He has covered hundreds major stories in the state. From storms to murders to sports, Tom has been on the scene. He has won three Emmys, the first in 1984 for his coverage of the Steven Wood homicide trial. He won another for a series on drunken driving. But it is his reporting on politics that has made perhaps the biggest impact.
He was the first to report that Al Gore had chosen Senator Joe Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate. He is credited with being first with the news the New England Patriots were coming to Hartford, and the first to report they were pulling out. He also broke the news the Whalers National Hockey League team was leaving Hartford. Tom is co-host of “Connecticut Newsmakers” on Channel 30 where he interviews politicians and government leaders every week. He won the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle Award in New England for his long career to contributions to television news. Tom attended Central Connecticut State University and the University of Hartford. He and his wife Nancy live in the greater Hartford area. He is on the air daily with stories from the Statehouse and beyond.
Patrick Sheehan’s news career started 43 years ago at WILI Radio in Willimantic. His first TV news job was in 1968 at WHCT-TV in Hartford where he was an anchor and political reporter. He moved back to radio for two years, working at WDRC Hartford and WINS in New York. Then it was back to TV news anchoring at Connecticut Public Television, WTNH in New Haven, WFSB in Hartford and then spending 10 years at Channel 61, WTIC-TV, where he worked until 1999.
Pat left journalism to pursue a new career in investment management and is manager of a major investment firm in Hartford. But he has continued his involvement in public affairs and journalism. He helped found the Connecticut Television Network and serves as the chairman of the Connecticut Public Affairs Network, its governing board. CT-N is the equivalent of CSPAN within the state, providing coverage of government hearings and General Assembly sessions. He was voted as Connecticut’s Outstanding Newscaster several times in the 1980s and was given a Silver Circle lifetime Emmy award by the New England Chapter of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He won the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission E. Bartlett Barnes award. He was the first broadcaster elected as president of the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in 1987. Pat’s public service includes serving on the University of Connecticut Foundation Board, as a trustee of Cheshire Academy, and a director of the Manufacturing Alliance of Connecticut along with other civic activities.
Pat served as a Second Lieutenant in the Army National Guard and holds a bachelor's from UConn in political science. Pat and his wife, Jane, live in Cheshire. They have four children.
2007
Robert C. "Bob" Child III has been a photographer in Connecticut for almost 50 years. He covered virtually every major news story in that time and many not so major stories. Thousands of his photos have been published.
Bob Child graduated from Yale in 1958 and began shooting for the New Haven Register that year. He worked at the former New Haven Journal-Courier as well. Bob has photographed every president except LBJ and every governor since Tom Meskill. He covered the Black Panther Trial and the May Day demonstrations in 1970. He joined the Associated Press in 1972 and has been with it since.
He won the National Associated Press Managing Editors award for Feature Photos in 1988. The image was of a woman police officer saluting with tears in her eyes at the funeral of her finance’ , also a cop, who was killed making a routine traffic stop.
AP reporter Matt Apuzzo says, “covering a story with Bob is like having a private tour guide. He’ll say, I knew his dad. I knew him when he was a beat cop. She used to work for so-and-so. Bobby knows everyone and, more importantly, everyone knows Bobby. He’s disarming and charming and, before people know it, they’re letting him make a great picture and telling you things they probably shouldn’t.”
Bob’s twin brother, the late Pat Child, was a videographer at WTNH-TV for more than 40 years. Journalists in Connecticut used to describe major news stories as “Two Child Events,” because both of them would show up to make images. Memorable images. Award winning images.
Bob Child retired from the Associated Press in 2009.
The Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame inducted Pat just after his untimely death.
Sherman D. London spent most of his journalism life at the Waterbury Republican-American. He was a political and legislative reporter, assistant managing editor, and for the last 20 years of his career served as the Editorial Director. He retired in 1989. Sherman is a true native son of Waterbury. He was born there in 1922. After graduating from Rider College in 1942 his first job was at the former Waterbury Democrat. He was drafted during World War II and served with a field artillery division in the Pacific.
When he came home he returned to the Democrat. It was sold to the Republican-American in 1947 and he stayed on…for more than 40 years.
Sherman has been a long-time advocate of freedom of information in Connecticut. He has served as an FOI commissioner since 1996, retiring in 2013. He has won many journalism awards, including the CTSPJ Helen M. Loy award for efforts in Freedom of Information, and a United Press International honor for the best editorial on education in 1977. He served a term as president of the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and was a member of the Ethics Committee of the National Conference of Editorial Writers.
Sherman has been a reservist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency handling public affairs during disaster recovery efforts. Sherman serves as co-chair of Vision Waterbury, in on the Board of Directors of the Greater Waterbury Arts Council, is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and several other community boards.
Morgan McGinley was editorial page editor at the New London Day for 26 years. He has been a fixture in Connecticut journalism with honors and awards to fill several walls and trophy cabinets. He won numerous SPJ awards over his career, including the Stephen A. Collins Freedom of Information award in 2001.
He has also won a number of New England awards for editorial writing including the New England Press Association award for best editorial and best editorial writer for papers under 50,000 circulation just this year. Morgan was a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 and 2005. He has been president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers Foundation, president of the National Conference, and the New England Society of Newspaper Editors.
He is a board member and past president of the Connecticut Council of Freedom of Information and board member of the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government. He won the Yankee Quill Award in 2001 for his contributions to better Journalism in New England throughout his career. He has also served on several community boards in New London.
Morgan is a graduate of Colby College in Maine. He is married to Lisa McGinley, who was a managing editor at the Day. They have three grown children. He retired from the Day in April 2008.
2006
Edward Frede was born in 1935. He graduated from Danbury High School in 1952 and the University of Connecticut in 1956. He served in the U.S. Navy for four years, rising to the rank of commander and working as an air intelligence officer aboard the USS Forrestal. Afterward, he went to work at The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Virginia, where he was a reporter for three years.
He and his wife Mary Ann met there, married, and moved to California, where Frede worked at two newspapers. Stephen Collins, longtime editor of The News-Times, had always told Frede if he wanted a job in his hometown to call. In 1969, he did. He started his career at the Danbury News-Times that year as a copy editor. He became editor in 1980 and executive editor in 1995.
Former News-Times publisher Wayne J. Shepard said, “Certainly all editors of this newspaper have cared about the quality of our writing, our news coverage and our image in the community. But Ed, more than any of us, took the blue-collar approach to wearing our logo across his forehead…He continually sought out townspeople to chat about their views – good or bad – of our daily news content. Every day, he wanted to make our reporters’ writing better.”
Ed served as the secretary/treasurer of both the Connecticut Council on the FOI and the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government. He received the E. Bartlett Barnes Award from the FOI Commission for his lifetime of work promoting open government.
Harold Hornstein graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1947, which he attended following his service in World War II in the Army. In the war he served during the invasion of Sicily and in Italy, Corsica, France and Belgium. He started his professional journalism career in 1948 as an investigative reporter for the Enquirer of Columbus, Georgia. He was a cub reporter, but his work in Georgia from 1948 to 1952 led to his paper winning a Pulitzer in 1955 for the clean up of Phenix City, which had been known as “Sin City.”
He moved to Connecticut in 1952 and started work at the Fairfield Citizen. He moved to the Westport Town Crier as news editor. He worked as a reporter and editorial writer at several papers, including the Bridgeport Post-Telegram, now known as the Connecticut Post. He toiled there for 14 years until joining the New Haven Register and its sister paper – the old Journal-Courier. He wrote editorials for those papers until 1987 when he “retired.” He also wrote the Our Connecticut column weekly for the Register for about 15 years and continued writing editorials on a freelance basis.
But Harold wasn’t done yet. He covered education for the Westport News for three more years. And he was still writing freelance for the Westport News, the New York Times Connecticut section, the Fairfield News and Westport Magazine as he approached 86 years on the planet.
Harold won many awards, but perhaps the one dearest to SPJ is the 1992 Stephen Collins Public Service Award. That is given to only one news organization in the state each year. Harold’s stories about elementary school buses led the Westport Board of Education to institute safety monitors on the buses.
He has also passed along his craft to many young reporters at various papers and taught as an adjunct professor at Southern, the University of Bridgeport, the University of Hartford and Gateway Community College.
He died in 2011 at age 90.
2005
Pat Child was a news photographer for New Haven’s WTNH-TV, Channel 8, for almost 40 years.
He covered most major news stories in the state during his remarkable career.
Child worked with dozens of reporters over his many years, often knowing as much or more about the personalities and the politics as they did.
Child knew the state of Connecticut extraordinarily well. He guided many young reporters and videographers toward more complete coverage of events.
His brother, Bob, also a news photographer, worked for the Associated Press. When an important news event occurred, members of the press referred to it as a “two Child” story because both would be at the scene.
Pat covered everything. Hurricanes, blizzards, political conventions and day-to-day news stories. He retired, moved to Florida and died in 2004 at the age of 69.
Bohdan "Bo" Kolinsky was a longtime assistant sports editor for high schools at the Hartford Courant who died in December 2003 at age 49.
Kolinsky came to the Courant in 1973 and was put in charge of high schools in 1977. He became the leading authority on high schools in the state. There are two scholarships given in memory of Kolinsky: one to an aspiring sportswriter by the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance and one by the Courant, which has named it the Bo Kolinsky Team Player Scholarship.
(Excerpts from the Hartford Courant)
2004
Bart Barnes is perhaps best known as the publisher of the Bristol Press, an enterprise he led for 30 years until his family sold the newspaper in 1985.
He started there in 1937 as an advertising sales person and moved up in the ranks. He also was among a small group of editors and publishers who, in the mid-1950s, launched a 20-year campaign for the creation of a state Freedom of Information law. Bart served on the FOI commission from 1985 to 1989, where he acquitted himself with characteristic diligence, fairness and impartiality. Mitchell Pearlman, executive director of the commission, said Barnes was “an icon of what a newspaper publisher, a public citizen and a public servant ought to be.”
Yale University graduate, publisher, scion of one of Bristol’s best-known families, E. Bartlett Barnes had pedigree and prominence. Yet his personal qualities — an unassuming style, humor, kindness and passion for community — earned him genuine affection.
In Bristol, Bart's influence was pervasive. He is credited with transforming the New England Carousel Museum into a nonprofit group dedicated to preservation and education. He helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships for local students.
Remarkably youthful and spry well into his later years, Bart relished his daily walks. He was perceptive and curious. When people many years his junior were intimidated by the internet, Bart embraced it. He had a vast store of knowledge about Bristol and shared it. People came away from a conversation with Bart more knowledgeable, a little wiser and almost always smiling. He died in 2004 at the age of 96.
Bob Eddy was publisher and editor of the Hartford Courant. He worked at the Courant from 1962 to 1974 after many years as a journalist in the Midwest.
Bob was instrumental in pushing the Courant’s coverage into the suburbs. He was a past president of the New England Society of Newspaper Editors, and an active member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Associated Press Managing Editors and several other journalism groups.
He served in Military Intelligence in World War II. Bob traveled extensively and wrote from places like Africa, Chile and the Middle East. He won bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Minnesota and later was given that school’s highest award for outstanding journalism standards and for promoting journalism education. He won a Fulbright to lecture on journalism in India and taught at the University of Nebraska and Syracuse.
Bob was a founder of the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. In that role, he created the SPJ Foundation that awards annual scholarships to promising young journalists to help them to afford a college education. SPJ’s largest scholarship is named for him.
Bob Eddy died in 1988 at the age of 1970.
(Excerpts from the Hartford Courant)
Reid MacCluggage served as publisher of the New London Day from 1984 to 2001. Reid was the first New London Day publisher who was hired from outside the paper. He oversaw the expansion of the paper’s coverage from the city of New London to include Norwich and some of the surrounding towns.
Reid got his start in journalism as a reporter at the Hartford Courant after graduating from the University of Hartford in 1961. Over the next 21 years at the Courant, he had a variety of editorial positions, including bureau chief, copy editor, magazine writer and state editor. He became assistant managing editor of the Courant in 1973 and was promoted to managing editor of the paper in1982. MacCluggage was named editor, publisher and president of The Day two years later.
He has been a Pulitzer Prize juror, director of the Associated Press Managing Editors association, president of The Associated Press Connecticut Circuit and president of the New England Associated Press News Executives Association.
Reid has also served as a director of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors Human Resources Committee, and vice president of The Task Force on Minorities in the Newspaper Business. He was President of the Associated Press Managing Editors association from 1997-1998. He has received the University of Hartford Distinguished Alumnus Award and the Yankee Quill Award, presented by the Academy of New England Journalists.
ALL OTHER YEARS
Stephen A. Collins had a lifelong devotion to newspapers that began at age 9 when he was a delivery boy for the News-Times in Danbury.
He later went on to become a high school correspondent for the newspaper. At the age of 32, he was named editor of the paper, earning the distinction of being the youngest editor in the state.
He later was named editorial director, a position he held until his retirement in December 1985 after more than 51 years with the newspaper. Stephen was born in Danbury, and was well-known throughout the state for his pioneering work on the state Freedom of Information Act. He was a longtime SPJ FOI Chairman.
He died on Feb. 27, 1986 at the age of 69.
Walt Dibble was hired on a handshake at WTIC in 1977, but Hartford had already heard the voice on “Earwitness News” for nearly 10 years at WDRC, 10 years before that in New Haven and before that, Walt was Bridgeport’s newsman, 50 years in Connecticut broadcast news all told.
Walt had graduated from Stamford High School and received his degree from The New England School of Radio in 1948. Walt Dibble personally trained Hartford’s first flying traffic reporter. As WTIC-AM News Director and Managing Editor, he brought the coveted Ohio State Award to WTIC, along with the national RTNDA (Radio & Television News Directors Association) Investigative Reporting Award and enough Associated Press Awards to fill a Gold Building. Even though he was the boss, Walt Dibble was never afraid to pick up a microphone to hit the street and cover a breaking story. In 1995, the Hartford Associated Press presented Walt with the Abrams Award as Best Reporter in the state. Walt was not only a great broadcasting voice and journalist, he was a great listener, and in his career, he interviewed the biggest names in Hollywood, presidents of the United States, and of course, the man on the street.
If Walt were to pick one story, it just might be the collapse of the Hartford Civic Center roof. As usual, Walt won The AP Award that year for Continuous Coverage in the anchor chair. What listeners didn’t know, is that Walt wasn’t reading from a script.
He taught at Southern Connecticut State University and the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, and instilled in many interns his work ethic and his desire to “get the story” and get it right.
Walt Dibble died in 1997 and left his wife Barbara, his sons, Rob, Lee and Chris, and his daughters, Laurie, Holly, and Sherry.
Chuck Dixon never met an awkward phrase he didn’t hate.
Chuck ran the state news desk at the Waterbury Republican-American, where he taught a generation of reporters how to write crisply and succinctly.
He demanded sharp thinking and tight writing. He could be a fearsomely tough critic. But the loyalty that he inspired in his staff lives on long after his retirement and years after his death.
Chuck's specialty was always crime news. After serving in the Navy during the Korean War, he joined the Arizona Republic in 1954 as a cub reporter.
Soon, he was assigned to the police and courts beats.
In his first year on the job, he was dispatched to the Arizona State Prison to witness – and cover – the execution of a confessed murderer.
He left journalism in 1958 for public relations in the insurance industry. But he returned to newspapers in 1970, joining the Waterbury Republican as an assistant state editor.
Chuck worked there for more than 20 years as an editor, yet never completely stopped being a reporter. In 1972, he covered the murder of a Torrington High School girl, winning awards from state and regional news organizations. He spent a week in New London in 1988 covering the conclusion of the spectacular “Woodchipper” murder trial. When the judge abruptly declared a mistrial late on a Friday night, Chuck filed a rich, insightful story in time for Page 1 …. dictating much of it on deadline when his old TRS-80 gave out.
After retiring in 1991 as assistant managing editor, Chuck wrote a Sunday column that was anything but ordinary.
He did ride-alongs with a driving instructor and a trash collector … subbed as a bookstore security guard … tried hitch-hiking along Route 254 to see who would offer him a ride …. and even posed as a deadbeat — but hungry — customer at Torrington restaurants to find out whether he’d get stuck washing dishes.
Chuck died in 2006 at 76. His memorial service brought together dozens of former colleagues who traveled from around the country to attend.
Theodore A. Driscoll III began his career with the Hartford Courant in 1965 as a city hall reporter. After many years on that beat, he went on to become the paper’s first full-time investigative reporter. His cutting-edge reporting included balancing Connecticut and national news angles, as in his in-depth coverage of the gangland murders during the early 1980s of two World Jai Alai executives in Oklahoma and Miami. The murder trail led to a Boston-based hit team whose members protected themselves by serving as FBI informants against New England Mafia leaders.
Theodore was born in Westport, attended Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and graduated from the University of Connecticut. In 1975, he helped found Investigate Reporters and Editors Inc. He died Dec. 21, 1988 at the age of 50.
Robin Marshall Glassman founded the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University. Over a 50-year career, she worked as a newspaper reporter and managing editor, newspaper writing coach, news service correspondent, and film, TV and magazine writer with work produced on network TV and in leading publications. She worked on special assignments with Life magazine and has been published in many other regional and national publications. An article she wrote was adapted for an NBC TV network special. She has worked as an editor and reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Lake City (Florida) Gazette, the New Haven Register and Fair Press. She was a reporter for United Press International.
In 1989, the Society of Professional Journalists selected Robin from among journalism professors in the nation for its award to “The Distinguished Teacher of Journalism.” She was active in SPJ for a quarter of a century, serving on the Connecticut chapter board of directors and as president. When she retired, Connecticut SPJ decided to name its Lifetime Achievement Award after her.
She received a bachelor's from Tulane University, a master's from Yale and completed studies for the Ph.D. in Yale’s interdisciplinary program in psychology, sociology and anthropology. Robin retired from Southern in 1995, and died in 2009 at age 83.
Paul Gough. You may not know it, but Paul has touched the lives of more journalists in Connecticut than probably any other individual. Since the 1970s, Paul has administered the annual Connecticut Journalism Awards contest. With an average of a thousand entries a year — do the math — Paul has handled over 35,000 entries.
During these years the contest has raised over $350,000 for the scholarship fund. He worked with Don Hewett and Douglas Edwards to raise another $30,000 for the Bob Eddy Scholarship.
Paul has also served in every office in the state SPJ Chapter, including president, and on the Board of Directors.
He also had a significant career in Connecticut journalism. As a city reporter for the New Haven Register, he covered the Black Panthers. One of the people he reported on was Warren Kimbro, who later admitted killing a suspected police informant.
Paul shifted to the medicine and science beat. He became one of the first environmental reporters in the state. During this time, he interviewed a number of famed scientists including Werner Von Braun, Edmund Land, astronaut Wally Schirra and Nobel Prize winner Lars Onsager.
He left the Register in 1973 to work at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. He was in charge of its many publications. While there, he was a pioneer in the use of computers. He used Pagemaker when it was still in development. He developed the first webpage at the Station. He retired in 2003.
Paul’s father was a journalist. His son became a journalist. It’s still very much in his blood. He even collects printing presses.
Paul lives with his wife Lisa, who helps with the contest, in Killingworth.
Robert J. Leeney began his long and distinguished journalism career in 1939 as a freelancer and joined the staff at the Register in 1940 as a reporter, Sunday feature writer and book page editor. His career was interrupted beginning in January 1943 when he served with the 3rd Air Commando Group, 5th Air Force during World War II. Upon his return in December 1945, Robert came back to the paper. By 1947, the New Haven native began to also serve as a drama critic.
He was an editorial writer and editor of the editorial page for the Register and the Journal Courier from 1947 to 1961. He became executive editor in 1962 and served as editor from 1972 to 1981, when he allegedly retired. He has since continued to write a weekly column, “Editor’s Note,” for the Register.
He was a charter member of the Connecticut SPJ chapter and served as commissioner of the Freedom on Information Commission from 1981 to 1986. He has won numerous awards, including the Yankee Quill Award for distinguished service to journalism and the Seal of the City Award from the New Haven Colony Historical Society in recognition of his contributions to New Haven’s civic life. City officials even named a local plaza after him.
Robert counts among his greatest accomplishments the technological modernization of the Register, introducing letters to the editor and starting the Sunday arts and leisure section.
“In the '60s, every community newspaper was a family-owned newspaper. Today the connection to the community is nearly non-existent,” he said. “The papers are far more professionalized. The staff is on the whole, better educated and they have a better general knowledge of public issues.”
Robert died in 2008 at the age of 92.
Forrest Palmer is the retired publisher of the Danbury News-Times.
He has served on the Board of the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government for many years. He was president of CFOG when it helped fund a serious study of the viability of FOI law in Connecticut. That study made national news and is still used as a benchmark of how to conduct studies of Freedom of Information compliance in the United States.
He has been a long and tireless fighter for keeping public records open to the public in Connecticut.
Richard Peck was in full bloom in the 1970s, the time of Watergate, when reporters everywhere had perhaps a little extra swagger in their step. This was in part thanks to the recognition going not only to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as individuals, but also to the value of the work, the profession, the role of the press as watchdog.
If a reporter ever took that role seriously, it was Richard Peck, first in his long-running posting as Bridgeport Post-Telegram bureau chief in Stratford, and in subsequent stints as city editor and columnist.
Richard gathered news the old-fashioned way — not by phone, by Blackberry, by press release, by Google — but by foot, step by step, through the gin mills, diners, Rotary luncheons, town and city halls, through places high and low — in other words, wherever real people gathered to tell their stories. Congenitally suspicious, relentlessly questioning, he was a skeptic in the best sense of that word.
But no nagging scold was Richard Peck. A gifted story-teller, his tales were punctuated with ready flashes of his trademark gap-toothed grin.
A Renaissance man. At least if you let Damon Runyon have his two cents on what that means: Richard was not only a raconteur and legendary epicure, he was a sporting man and handicapper extraordinaire. Many men have their shrines: Richard’s was Saratoga. He wrote with equal dexterity — and insight, by the way — about fillies and felons.
Finally, he was a teacher, sharing his passion and his knowledge with countless young journalists who came under his gaze, wherever he may have encountered them. In places high and low. His most effective was of sharing was by his example.
Al Primo was one of the original owners of the Cablevision franchise in Fairfield County, and helped create News 12 Connecticut, as well as News 12 Long Island. When he owned WNVR-AM in the Naugatuck-Waterbury area, he employed a six-person local news staff. Among his staffers was Chris Berman, now an icon on ESPN. Al was publisher of The Village Gazette in Greenwich, a weekly newspaper that won several awards for its coverage of the I-95 Mianus River Bridge in 1983. As consultant to WTNH Channel 8 in the mid-90s, he helped enhance the “Action News” concept.
Al is known as “The Father of ‘Eyewitness News’” and is credited with revolutionizing local news with that format. His career included news directorships in Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York. He became vice president of news for the ABC-owned TV stations before starting his TV news consulting firm, Primo Newservice, based in Old Greenwich. In 1999, Al was the founder of one of the Internet’s first video news websites, ForeignTV.com. In 2002, he helped create “Teen Kid News,” a weekly nationally syndicated newscast for teenagers. Al earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Pitt, and a gift to his alma mater helped establish The Journalism Lab, one of the nation’s first electronic classrooms.
Kenn Venit is a media consultant, teaches journalism at Quinnipiac University and Southern Connecticut State University, and is a past president of the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). He has been involved with various media for over 45 years, Kenn is perhaps best known for his years as an award-winning Channel 8 “Action News” reporter and anchor, also serving as an Accu-Weather forecaster, and “High School Bowl” quizmaster. Kenn was featured in the 2010 CPTV documentary, “The Blizzard of ’78,” recounting how he and others covered that historic storm. He joined Sigma Delta Chi as a student at Temple University in 1964.
Kenn has worked at Channels 3, 8, and 30, and has done some projects with FOX61. He anchors election night coverage and League of Women Voters candidate forums for North Haven’s cable station, NHTV18, and co-hosted a Rotary Club telethon on NHTV to raise funds for victims of the multiple disasters in Japan. He has been honored with lifetime achievement awards by the Boston-New England Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Science, and the Emerson College Chapter of the Radio-TV News Directors Association. Kenn received a Quinnipiac University Excellence in Teaching Award in 2006, and the Quinnipiac University Student Government Outstanding Faculty Award for 2009-2010.
Hannah Bunce Watson was 27, mother of five children all under age 7, when her husband’s death from smallpox catapulted her into the job as the publisher of the Hartford Courant in 1777.
She was one of the first female publishers in America. The next woman to take the helm at the Courant was Marty Petty, who was named to the job in 1997.
At the time of Ebenezer Watson’s death, the Courant had the largest circulation on the continent and was considered one of few independent voices, since Boston papers had been shut down by the British and only Tory papers were being published in New York.
Hannah Bunce Watson, left with children to raise and an estate to settle, had no background in publishing a newspaper.
But she took on a partner and kept the paper publishing on its regular schedule — a schedule that was threatened when the paper mill burned down in 1778, only four months after her husband’s death.
This was not a crisis for the Courant only; it was a blow to the patriot cause, reads one history account. “The British had closed down every patriotic press they could lay hand on, and had cut off imports of paper.”
If the Courant went, Americans would lose their largest remaining “patriotic journal.”
While cutting back the paper’s size, Hannah and Sarah Ledyard, widow of Ebenezer Watson’s partner in the paper mill, appealed to the Connecticut Assembly for help — and had the mill rebuilt that spring.
Hannah continued as publisher of the Courant, and in 1779, she married her next-door neighbor, Barzillai Hudson, who became a partner in the newspaper and took over publishing duties with another partner.
Within a few years, the paper, “attained a financial stability that was the envy of other newspapers of the era,“ reads one history account.
But even throughout its darkest days, the Courant never missed an issue – thanks in large part to Hannah Bunce Watson
Barbara Comstock White worked alongside her husband (and fellow hall-of-famer) Carter. She was editor and chairman of the editorial board of the Record-Journal for many years. She started writing features, travel pieces, book and play reviews and editorials and columns part-time for the old Meriden Morning Record in 1946.
She joined the paper full-time in 1956 and became its editor when the Morning Record and the afternoon Journal merged into the Record-Journal in 1978. She and Carter were a true team at home and work. They retired in 1988 but still came to work regularly into the mid-1990s.
Perhaps Barbara’s most recognizable presence over the years was her “Dining Out” column that helped readers learn what to expect from restaurants around the state and New England. Even in most of these columns, the Whites were together, with Barbara combining her own reactions with those of her constant dining companion and husband.
Barbara White served twice as Pulitzer Prize juror, was an active member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the New England Society of the Newspaper Editors and the national conference of Editorial Writers. She was an officer in the Meriden League of Women Voters, the Meriden College Club, AAUW and the city-wide PTA. She graduated magna cum laude in English Literature at Radcliffe College.
Carter H. White, the late publisher and chairman of the board of The Record-Journal Publishing Co. of Meriden, was inducted into the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame for his part in the struggle for open government and a free press.
White pushed for laws that would allow public access to government records.
His efforts as a state senator in Hartford and as the chairman of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information helped secure passage of the state Open Records Act in 1957 and Freedom of Information Act in 1975. White fearlessly wielded his editorial pen as publisher of the Record-Journal on behalf of causes he believed in.
In 1972, White wrote: “Right-to-know laws are not mere technicalities for the benefit of a few or of the press, but are designed as the policy of the state legislature to insure in a democracy the availability of all possible governmental information to all of the citizens for the better and fuller participation in their own government.”
White graduated from Meriden High School in 1934, Harvard University in 1938, Harvard Law School in 1941, practiced law as an attorney in Meriden from 1942 to 1952, served as a state senator from Meriden from 1947 to 1948, and advised the city as its corporation counsel from 1947 to 1950.
He became general counsel to the Record-Journal in 1949, publisher in 1967 and chairman in 1974. During that time, he encouraged his reporters to pursue aggressive watchdog journalism.
Shortly after White’s death, John Harvey, former Southington editor of the Record-Journal, wrote this about his publisher in the Record-Journal: “Carter White was something quite rare: an independent publisher who cared more about readers than revenue.”
White died in 2000.
Comments