News Story

The Media School honored seven alumni Sept. 25 in a ceremony that included IU President Michael McRobbie’s presentation of one of the university’s highest honors.

During the celebration at Franklin Hall’s Presidents Hall, Media School dean James Shanahan and McRobbie presented the school’s Distinguished Alumni Awards in Journalism to:

• John Ahlhauser, MA’73, PhD’78, photojournalist, educator and leader of national photojournalism groups;
• Joseph Angotti, BS’61, MA’65, senior vice president of news at NBC, chair of broadcast program at Northwestern University;
• Taik Sup Auh, MA’73, PhD’77, educator, administrator, textbook author;
• Del Brinkman, MA’63, PhD’71, dean of journalism programs at two universities, director of national program;
• Myrna Oliver, BA’64, reporter for 40 years, covering beats from courts to obituaries;
• Robert E. Thompson, BA’49, political reporter, editor, publisher, bureau chief.

McRobbie presented the Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion to the late Michel du Cille, BA’85, who died in December while on assignment for The Washington Post. A photojournalist and editor, du Cille was a three-time Pulitzer winner whose work often shone light on poverty and injustice.

The program included videos of each recipient’s career highlights, presentation of the awards and a few words from recipients or their families.

Ellen Kelly praised IU for enabling her grandfather, John Ahlhauser, to launch his photojournalism career and pave his path to teaching.

“They took a chance on a nontraditional student,” she said of Ahlhauser, who had a wife and three children when he began his studies. Ahlhauser’s health prevented him from attending the event.

Monica Gliva, daughter of Robert E. Thompson, said her father “was honored to come to IU on the G.I. Bill. It really changed the trajectory of his career.”

Angotti’s description of campus in the late 1940s, including the Quonset hut that was home to WFIU, generated some laughter among alumni in the crowd. His experience writing newscasts for the station and the influence of broadcast journalism professor Richard Yoakam led him to change his major from speech therapy to broadcast, he said.

Auh also praised his IU mentors, including Distinguished Professor Emertius Dave Weaver and Professor Emeritus Cleve Wilhoit, who were in the audience. He likened his experience at IU in the 1970s to that of his native South Korea, which was struggling to emerge from poverty and repression.

As his country transformed, “I was honored to take part in that as an educator, administrator and part-time columnist,” he said.

Brinkman recalled several ways in which his IU experiences were “life-changers,” including the guidance of professors John Stempel, Gretchen Kemp and Floyd Arpan. He arrived at IU in 1961 after a few years as a reporter and teacher, and his mentors shaped his future path into academia, he said. He called the award “a capstone of my long love affair with the journalism school at Indiana University.”

At IU, Myrna Oliver was editor of both the Arbutus yearbook and Indiana Daily Student, but she found the professional journalism world at that time less welcoming to women.

“Most of the women journalism students in my day were directed toward teaching high school and directing the high school yearbook and newspaper,” she said.

But Oliver pursued a newspaper career, covering many beats before delving into court reporting, then obituary writing, at the Los Angeles Times.

“I like to think what we did in those days was make it a little easier for the young women who are graduating today,” she said.

During his presentation of the medallion, McRobbie lauded not only du Cille’s talents as a photojournalist, but also the impact of his work in many parts of the world. Du Cille was covering the Ebola outbreak when he died of a heart attack, and his Pulitzer Prize work covered crack houses, victims of volcanoes and deplorable conditions at an Army hospital.

Du Cille’s widow, Nikki Kahn, accepted the medallion.

“He would be honored to receive this award,” she said. “I only wish he were here to thank you himself.”