Lisa’s MeatingPod podcast, covering the meat and the alt-meat industries, in April 2024 took home its third Jesse H. Neal Award in four years for “Best Podcast” in its category — this, for a production only four years old! Chris Scott is the podcast’s producer, and Lisa is its editor in chief. The Neals program is managed by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).
Yvette Walker was named VP Editorial Page Editor at the Kansas City Star to lead an award-winning team in 2023. She left academia, where she previously was assistant dean at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.
Coming back to the news industry, this time in the Opinion section, was unexpected but welcomed, she said. It is the second stint at The Star, working in features and news in the early 2000s.
“It really just feels like coming home,” she told The Star. “People like to hear what we’re thinking,” she said. “… We are helping people make decisions about their daily lives through the information that we’re imparting online and in the paper. Opinion does that, too, but in a way that the audience can really understand what we’re thinking and how we’re thinking about it. So that’s a little different, but really so enticing to me.”
Renee Cordes, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, received a first place award in the 2022 New England Better Newspaper Competition for racial, ethnic or gender issue coverage by a specialty publication. The award, from the New England Newspaper & Press Association, was for a feature article about female entrepreneurs overcoming obstacles to raise capital. Cordes is a senior writer at Mainebiz.
Neil Foote has jumped from the classroom to the administration of the University of North Texas New College, which is expanding its footprint with a brand new standalone campus in Frisco, Texas, one of the nation’s fastest-growing community colleges located just north of Dallas. He has worked as Associate Dean, Research, External Affairs, and Community Engagement. He now leads the internal and external marketing outreach as well as builds partnerships with local businesses and organizations to create more enriching, project-based, experiential research and learning. He was also elected as Board Chair of Forefront Living, a Dallas-based organization that provides active independent and assisted living, long-term care, Alzheimer’s and memory care, skilled nursing and rehabilitation therapies, hospice, and palliative care.
Kevin Reece is a 51-time Regional Emmy winner, currently at WFAA-TV in Dallas, where he recently received repeat Emmys for Reporter, Writer, and Video Journalist. Choosing to pick up a camera again late in his career, he has received the Lone Star Emmy for Video Journalist every year since 2015. And most of the credit goes to that sweltering camera-toting summer with Medill in D.C.
Mark G. Dillon ’86 MSJ of Minnetonka, MN was named Chair of the Board of Directors of the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International (CGSI), a 2,000-member group dedicated to genealogy research, history and the advancement of Czech, Slovak and Carpatho-Rusyn culture. Dillon also serves on the Scientific Council of Kasigarda, the Museum of Emigration from Slovakia to North America, Tahyna, Slovakia.
SiriusXM announced the launch of a new daily news and information program. Veteran journalist and Medill alum Steve Scully will host ‘The Briefing with Steve Scully’ – weekdays from 12-2 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. channel 124. On his new SiriusXM show, Scully – Senior Vice President at Washington, D.C.’s Bipartisan Policy Center – will take listeners inside the stories and conversations that are shaping the day in the nation’s capital.
In addition to his radio show, Scully will host regular events in collaboration with the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he currently serves as Senior Vice President. In his three-decade career at C-SPAN, Steve Scully served as C-SPAN’s political editor and a primary host. He also spent nine years on the White House Correspondents’ Association Board of Directors, including as president from 2006-07.
If you’re covering this year’s mid-term congressional elections, it might be worth a look at the spring Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. Charles Pekow compiled advice from a variety of knowlegeable veterans, including Medill Professor Larry Stuelpnagel and alum Susan Page, among others. To find the sidebar on fact checking, you need to download the whole issue.
Laura Washington (BSJ78, MSJ80) is starting a new job at the Chicago Tribune after 20 years at the Chicago Sun-Times. Her weekly column, featuring her reporting on race, politics and urban issues, will appear in the Tribune’s opinion section starting June 6.
Mike Smith has been appointed to the board of governors of the National Press Club in Washington. He is also a member of the society of environmental journalists. Mike’s environmental reporting for Coastal Point newspaper has been honored by the MARYLAND, Delaware and Washington, DC (MDDC) Press Association.