2006: Patricia Dean

Patricia Dean (1968) is the Associate Director of the School of Journalism, Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Read More

2005: Wayne P. Davis

Wayne P. Davis (1988) was a weekly newspaper publisher at The Seymour Herald in southern Iowa for more than 30 years before joining the Iowa State Center public relations staff, where he became an assistant director, responsible for marketing, public relations and sales. For ten years following his master’s degree, Davis was on the faculty of Iowa State’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. Read More

2004: Karol Nickell

Karol DeWulf Nickell (1979) began her publishing career at Better Homes and Gardens and later became the founding editor-in-chief of several Meredith Corporation magazines Read More

2003: Bill Monroe

Bill Monroe (1969) worked as publisher of the Spencer Daily Reporter and editor of the Cedar Valley Daily Times in Vinton, Iowa before becoming the executive director of the Iowa Newspaper Association in 1982. Read More

2002: James E. Grunig

James Grunig (1964) is leading scholar and researcher of communications and behavior at the University of Maryland. He developed a situational theory that accounts for why people communicate, when they are most likely to communicate, and when communications are likely to have an impact. Read More

2001: Louis M. Thompson, Jr.

Louis M. Thompson, Jr. (1961, 1969) is a nationally recognized expert in corporate disclosure and governance and a long-time advocate of the investor relations officer’s role with corporate boards of directors. Read More

2000: Christopher Adams

Chris Adams (1988) is a reporter in the McClatchy Washington Bureau. He previously worked for the Wall Street Journal and the (New Orleans) Times-Picayune. Adams has reported on education, the steel industry, health care, race relations, and the environment. He has won numerous awards, including being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 and 1999, and in 2000 was part of a six-person Journal team that won the Pulitzer for stories on Pentagon spending. Read More

1999: Herbert Plambeck

Herb Plambeck was a farm worker, youth leader, and extension agent before becoming farm editor of the Davenport Times-Democrat in 1935. In 1936, he became farm director for WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa, a position he held until 1970. Read More

1998: Merrill Oster

Merrill Oster (1974) is an international business journalist and publishing entrepreneur. He founded several companies in the futures industry, including FutureSource, Professional Farmers of America, and Commodity Price Charts. Read More

1997: Ann K. Cooper

Ann Cooper (1971) reported for several newspapers and magazines before joining National Public Radio (NPR). Cooper was NPR’s first Moscow bureau chief, where she covered the final years of Soviet communism. Afterward, she was bureau chief in Johannesburg, and later covered the United Nations for NPR. Read More