School honors six with Distinguished Alumni Award in Journalism
Award-winning news reporters, producers, photographers and educators are among this year’s Media School Distinguished Alumni Award in Journalism recipients, the school announced July 20. The six alumni will be honored at a celebration in Bloomington Sept. 25.
“The Media School is proud to be a site that produces and recognizes great journalism,” said James Shanahan, dean of The Media School. “These honorees have made us proud to inherit the legacy of IU Journalism. We look forward to carrying that excellence forward into all that we do.”
The IU Journalism Alumni Board administered the selection process. The guidelines state that those eligible for the award include former students “who have become leaders in journalism and other media fields, as well as honorary alumni and students who majored in other fields, but took significant journalism coursework or worked on IU student media.”
The journalism program has been part of The Media School since July 1, 2014, and the award is in the process of expanding to include all Media School alumni.
The six recipients are:
John Ahlhauser, MA’73, PhD’78
John Ahlhauser was a staff photographer at the Milwaukee Journal for 25 years, beginning in 1948. His assignments included the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the civil rights movement of the mid-1960s and the inaugurations of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. He was president of National Press Photographers Association from 1967 to 1968 and won NPPA’s Joseph Sprague Award in 1977. Now professor emeritus, Ahlhauser taught journalism at IU for more than 20 years.
Joseph Angotti, BS’61, MA’ 65
Joseph Angotti’s broadcast career covered pivotal moments in U.S. history. He was a producer at NBC Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, was network chief producer for the 1976 election coverage, and oversaw coverage of space launches and presidential summits as executive producer for NBC Nightly News. As senior vice president of news at NBC, Angotti directed coverage of the massacre in Tiananmen Square. He was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2006. While at IU, he was WFIU’s first student news director.
Taik Sup Auh, MA’73, PhD’77
Taik Sup Auh, a native of South Korea, came to the United States in the 1960s to work at his country’s embassy. He enrolled in IU’s graduate journalism program in 1970. After graduation, Auh led a successful career in communications academia as an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Korea University in Seoul. He has authored and edited five textbooks used at Korean universities, and, in 2011, he was awarded the Order of Industrial Services Merit Award by the South Korean government.
Paul D. (Del) Brinkman, MA’63, PhD’71
Del Brinkman’s first job was as a reporter in Kansas in 1954, but he devoted the remainder of his career to education. Over the years, he has been dean of the communication schools at University of Kansas and University of Colorado, director of journalism for the Knight Foundation in Miami and president of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. In 2012, he was inducted into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame. He is a member of the IU Journalism Alumni Board.
Myrna Oliver, BA’64
Myrna Oliver had a 38-year career as a journalist in California. She began working for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in 1968, where she covered the Charles Manson murder trial. She moved to the LA Times in 1972, covering civil courts and legal affairs for 15 years. Oliver transitioned to writing distinctive obituaries, including the celebrity deaths of Jim Henson, Sam Walton and Leonard Bernstein, among others. She retired in 2006. Oliver was editor of the Indiana Daily Student and Arbutus at IU, while also working part-time for the (Bloomington, Indiana) Herald-Telephone.
Robert E. Thompson, BA’49
The late Robert E. Thompson attended IU on the G.I. Bill after World War II and devoted his career to political reporting and newspaper management. He was a reporter for the International News Service, worked on John F. Kennedy’s 1958 senatorial campaign and served as bureau chief and national editor for Hearst Newspapers. Thompson was a member of the Gridiron Club, a Washington journalistic organization, and the National Press Club. He died in 2003.
The school will present the awards during a banquet in Presidents Hall in Franklin Hall, the future home of The Media School.
The evening will begin with a reception, followed by dinner and presentation of the awards, which will include video tributes to the honorees’ careers. The recipients, families and colleagues will accept the awards.
The Media School was inaugurated in October of 2014, and its new curriculum will go into effect this fall. The school will continue to offer a bachelor of arts in journalism.
More: