Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame

CTSPJ inducts Jon Lender to Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame

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.

His former editor, Rick Green, says, “Jon is a methodical and persistent journalist who over a long career never lost sight of his mission to shine a light in dark places. He represents a diminishing and proud newspaper tradition of columnists who investigate and let their reporting tell the story.”

A young reporter said, Russel Blair said,

“Beyond his investigative reporting, Jon served as a key mentor to scores of young journalists during his four-plus decades at The Courant. Whether speaking to a college class or a group of Courant interns, Jon patiently gave important, practical real world advice on how to approach difficult interviews and other challenges on the job, life lessons that in many cases transcended journalism.”

He won many journalism awards. One judge wrote: “ …Lender
is from the old ‘I Smell a Rat’ school of investigative journalism. Reading one of his columns is like reading a thoroughly involving short story. The narrative is one of corruption’…”

Lender has had a remarkable career giving life to the journalistic idea of public service. His career clearly meets the standard of a “significant and enduring” contribution to Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame.

Ken Dixon and John Elliott to be inducted to the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame on May 23

The Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists will induct two longtime journalists into the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame at its annual dinner on May 23.

Hearst Connecticut political editor Ken Dixon and now retired 96.5 WTIC morning news anchor John Elliott both had careers that spanned more than 40 years.

Ken Dixon

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

Elliott holds the distinction of being the longest running radio news anchor in the state of Connecticut with 42 years at 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.

Lucy Crosbie inducted into Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame

The Connecticut Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has inducted Lucy Crosbie, former president of the Chronicle Printing Co., into Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame.

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.

Crosbie is our only Hall of Fame induction for 2018.

The CT SPJ created the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame to honor journalists who have made a significant and enduring contribution to journalism in the state. The entire Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame may be viewed here. Nominations are accepted throughout the year through an online form on the Connecticut SPJ website. Once nominated, a journalist’s name remains on the list for reconsideration for five more years.

Diane Smith and Maureen Croteau to be inducted into Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame

The Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists board of directors will induct two longtime journalists into the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame at its annual dinner on May 25.

University of Connecticut’s Journalism Department Chairwoman Maureen Croteau and television and radio broadcaster and author Diane Smith each had careers that spanned more than 30 years.

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).

Croteau 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.

Founding members of CTSPJ to be inducted into Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame

The Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists board of directors will induct the 13 charter members of the chapter into the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame at its annual dinner May 26.

The 14 men — Bob Eddy, Samuel Barstein, Herbert Brucker, William J. Clew, D. Barry Connelly, Dorman E. Cardell, Russell G. D’Oench, Norman Fenichel, Frank Hepler, Carl E. Lindstrom, Robert M. Lucas, Arland R. Meade, Laurence A. Silver and Sidney P. Steward — formed the Connecticut Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists – Sigma Delta Chi in 1966. National SPJ granted their charter on Feb. 3, 1966.

Their efforts have had a ripple effect on journalism in the state over the last 50 years.

During that time, the Connecticut chapter of SPJ hosted hundreds of professional development workshops 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 hosts an Excellence in Journalism contest, which gets between 800 and 1,000 entries each year, in order to recognize the work of journalists across the state. The contest winners are honored at an awards banquet in May, the largest gathering of journalists in the state each year.

The contest raises money for the board operations, including thousands of dollars in donations given to journalism causes. For example, in 2016, the board donated $500 to help host the Connecticut FOI day, donated another $500 toward CCFOI and CFOG, supported the SPJ Legal Defense Fund and Region 1 Fund with $500 each, and helped Connecticut student chapters pay for programming and conference attendance. Additionally, the chapter donated $750 toward the Bob Eddy Scholarship Fund in 2016.

Over the last 50 years, CTSPJ has hosted influential regional conferences, including one this past April at Southern Connecticut State University. This year’s conference attracted 200 journalists from across New England and the tri-state area.

The board created the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame to bring credit to those who have made significant contributions to journalism in the state. The actions of these 13 men has 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, is already a member of the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame.

The others will be inducted together at the annual Excellence in Journalism Awards Dinner Thursday, May 26, 2016 at Seasons at the Tradition in Wallingford.

To purchase tickets to the dinner, visit our dinner page on the website.

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Bob Eddy

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.

Eddy 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. Eddy traveled extensively and wrote from places like Africa, Chile and the Middle East. He won bachelors and masters 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.

Eddy 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)

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Carter H. White

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.”

Mr. White died in 2000.

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Barbara Comstock White

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.

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Cindy Simoneau

Cindy Simoneau

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.

Simoneau was inducted into the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame in 2015.

Photos by Vern Williams.

Cindy Simoneau to be inducted into the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame

Cindy Simoneau