Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Chuck Dixon

Chuck Dixon never met an awkward phrase he didn’t hate.

Dixon ran the state news desk at the Waterbury Republican-American, where he taught a generation of reporters how to write crisply and succinctly.

Dixon demanded sharp thinking and tight writing. He could be a fearsomely tough critic. But the loyalty that he inspired in his staff lives on long after his retirement and years after his death.

Dixon’s specialty was always crime news. After serving in the Navy during the Korean War, he joined the Arizona Republic in 1954 as a cub reporter.

Son, he was assigned to the police and courts beats.

In his first year on the job, he was dispatched to the Arizona State Prison to witness – and cover – the execution of a confessed murderer.

He left journalism in 1958 for public relations in the insurance industry. But he returned to newspapers in 1970, joining the Waterbury Republican as an assistant state editor.

Dixon worked there for more than 20 years as an editor, yet never completely stopped being a reporter.  In 1972, he covered the murder of a Torrington High School girl, winning awards from state and regional news organizations. He spent a week in New London in 1988 covering the conclusion of the spectacular “Woodchipper” murder trial. When the judge abruptly declared a mistrial late on a Friday night, Dixon filed a rich, insightful story in time for Page 1 ….  dictating much of it on deadline when his old TRS-80  gave out.

After retiring in 1991 as assistant managing editor, Dixon wrote a Sunday column that was anything but ordinary.

He did ride-alongs with a driving instructor and a trash collector … subbed as a bookstore security guard … tried hitch-hiking along Route 254 to see who would offer him a ride …. and even posed as a deadbeat — but hungry — customer at Torrington restaurants to find out whether he’d get stuck washing dishes.

Dixon died four years ago at 76. His memorial service brought together dozens of former colleagues who traveled from around the country to attend.

Mike Balchunas,  one of Dixon’s deputy editors in the 1980s, describes him this way:

“I think Chuck was the best journalism ‘teacher’ I’ve ever seen, even though that wasn’t in his job description. He was a consummate storyteller with the highest ethical standards … a strong sense of fairness … and a tremendous knack for knowing what elements belonged in a story and what to leave out.”

 

 

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Jerry Dunklee

Jerry Dunklee has been a broadcaster and professor for 45 years.  32 of those years have been in Connecticut.

Jerry worked at WELI Radio in New Haven as a talk show host for more than 7 years.  During that time his number-one rated evening show delved into topics as wide-ranging as nuclear power to Broadway musicals.  He interviewed over 6-thousand people at WELI.  He has also filled in as a talk host at WPOP in Hartford and WICC in Bridgeport.  Jerry also worked in New York and Boston during his news and talk career.

He started teaching full time in 1985 at Southern Connecticut State University.  He has taught thousands of students, many of whom have become career journalists.  His students were involved in two major studies of compliance with FOI law at the state and local level.  Both studies resulted in national news coverage and more focus on how agencies actually deal with FOI. He, under the mentoring of the late Robin Glassman, led the Journalism Department for nine years.

Jerry has been president, vice president and ethics chair of Connecticut SPJ.  Over the years he created dozens of workshops and panels in the state dealing with FOI, Free Press/Fair Trial, Ethics and Investigative Journalism.

He has fought for student First Amendment rights at both the college and high school level.

Jerry has been a member of the National Ethics Committee of SPJ since 1994 and helped write the current Code of Ethics.

He has two grown children, Brady and Caitlin.  Brady started a charity to help poor children in Nicaragua and Caitlin works in prison reform in New York.

He served in the Army from 1966 to 1968 as a member of the Bomb Squad.

He just completed his 25th year at Southern.

Dunklee was inducted in 2010. Below is his acceptance speech:

When the late Robin Marshall-Glassman and I started talking about creating a Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame many years ago the last thing I ever considered was being a member of this extraordinary group.  As most of you know, Robin was one of our first inductees for her remarkable writing and her dedication to the craft of journalism.  Her selfless toil for several generations of journalists was inspiring.  She was my mentor and friend.  And any light shone on me, and many others in the room tonight, is reflected from her brilliant, still-beaming beacon.  Thank you Robin.

Journalism is essential to our way of life.  Democracy cannot thrive without your daily efforts to reveal our world and educate readers, listeners and viewers.  Ethical, informed journalism is the food and drink of effective self-government.  Absent this menu of news and views we will become anorexic and susceptible to fear and the deleterious effects of ignorance.   We have been enduring hard times.  Some say quality journalism cannot survive.  I don’t believe that.  I believe your hard work matters.  And I hope you fight on.

When Cindy Simoneau told me I, and the others honored here tonight, had been selected to enter the Hall of Fame I was, to say the least, surprised.

She said, ”We wanted to honor you guys while you’re still alive to enjoy it.”

As you all know, journalists are only as good as their last story.

While I’m still kickin’ I hope there are still a few stories in me…and some ways of communicating to the general public the value of what you do in their lives.

I am deeply honored to be considered worthy of this distinction.

 

 

 

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Paul Gough

Paul Gough.  You may not know it, but Paul has touched the lives of more journalists in Connecticut than probably any other individual.  Since the 1970s Paul has administered the annual Connecticut Journalism Awards contest.  With an average of a thousand entries a year…do the math…Paul has handled over 35-thousand entries…arranged out – of – state judging, printed certificates and handed them out at this banquet.  Now that is persistence.  And dedication.

During these years the contest has raised over $350,000 for the scholarship fund.  He worked with Don Hewett and Douglas Edwards to raise another $30,000 for the Bob Eddy Scholarship.

Paul has also served in every office in the state SPJ Chapter, including president, and on the Board of Directors.

He also had a significant career in Connecticut Journalism.  As a city reporter for the New Haven Register he covered the Black Panthers.  One of the people he reported on was Warren Kimbro, who later admitted killing a suspected police informant.

Paul shifted to the medicine and science beat.  He became one of the first environmental reporters in the state.  During this time he interviewed a number of famed scientists including Werner Von Braun, Edmund Land, Astronaut Wally Schirra and Nobel Prize winner, Lars Onsager.

He left the Register in 1973 to work at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. He was in charge of their many publications. While there he was a pioneer in the use of computers.  He used Pagemaker when it was still in development.  He developed the first webpage at the Station.  He retired in 2003.

Paul’s father was a journalist.  His son became a journalist.  It’s still very much in his blood.  He even collects printing presses.

Paul lives with his wife Lisa, who helps with the contest, in Killingworth.

 

 

 

 

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Bob Child

Robert C. Child III has been a photographer in Connecticut for almost 50 years.  He  covered virtually every major news story in that time and many not so major stories.  Thousands of his photos have been published.

Bob Child graduated from Yale in 1958 and began shooting for the New Haven Register that year.  He worked at the former New Haven Journal-Courier as well.  Bob has photographed every president except LBJ and every governor since Tom Meskill.  He covered the Black Panther Trial and the May Day demonstrations in 1970.  He joined the Associated Press in 1972 and has been with it since.

He won the National Associated Press Managing Editors award for Feature Photos in 1988. The image was of a woman police officer saluting with tears in her eyes at the funeral of her finance’ , also a cop, who was killed making a routine traffic stop.

AP reporter Matt Apuzzo says, “covering a story with Bob is like having a private tour guide. He’ll say,  I knew his dad.  I knew him when he was a beat cop.  She used to work for so-and-so.  Bobby knows everyone and, more importantly, everyone knows Bobby.  He’s disarming and charming and, before people know it, they’re letting him make a great picture and telling you things they probably shouldn’t.”

Bob’s twin brother, the late Pat Child, was a videographer at WTNH-TV for more than 40 years.  Journalists in Connecticut used to describe major news stories as “Two Child Events,” because both of them would show up to make images.  Memorable images. Award winning images.

Bob Child retired from the Associated Press in 2009.

The Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame inducted Pat just after his untimely death.  We take great pride in honoring Robert C. Child III as he enters the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame.

 

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Morgan McGinley

Morgan McGinley was editorial page editor at the New London Day for 26 years.  He has been a fixture in Connecticut journalism with honors and awards to fill several walls and trophy cabinets.  He won numerous SPJ awards over his career, including the Stephen A. Collins Freedom of Information award in 2001.

He has also won a number of New England awards for editorial writing including the New England Press Association award for best editorial and best editorial writer for papers under 50,000 circulation just this year.  Morgan was a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 and 2005.  He has been president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers Foundation, president of the National Conference, and the New England Society of Newspaper Editors.

He is a board member and past president of the Connecticut Council of Freedom of Information and board member of the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government.  He won the Yankee Quill Award in 2001 for his contributions to better Journalism in New England throughout his career.  He has also served on several community boards in New London.

Morgan is a graduate of Colby College in Maine.  He is married to Lisa McGinley who is the assistant managing editor for reporting at the Day.  They have three grown children. He retired from the Day in April 2008.

We are honored to induct Morgan McGinley to the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame.

 

 

 

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Richard Peck

Back in the day, when cigar smoke hung thick in the newsroom and the clatter of typewriters and wire machines ricocheted off the linoleum and concrete of the walls, and reporters were, on occasion, actually admired, Richard Peck was in full bloom.

It was the 1970’s, the time of Watergate, and reporters everywhere had perhaps a little extra swagger in their step. This was in part thanks to the recognition going not only to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as individuals, but also to the value of the work, the profession, the role of the press as watchdog.

If a reporter ever took that role seriously, it was Richard Peck, first in his long-running posting as Bridgeport Post-Telegram bureau chief in Stratford, and in subsequent stints as city editor and columnist.

Richard gathered news the old-fashioned way – not by phone, by Blackberry, by press release, by Google – but by foot, step by step, through the gin mills, diners, Rotary luncheons, town and city halls, through places high and low – in other words, wherever real people gathered to tell their stories. Congenitally suspicious, relentlessly questioning, he was a skeptic in the best sense of that word.

But no nagging scold was Richard Peck. A gifted story-teller, his tales were punctuated with ready flashes of his trademark gap-toothed grin.

A Renaissance man. At least if you let Damon Runyon have his two cents on what that means: Richard was not only a raconteur and legendary epicure, he was a sporting man and handicapper extraordinaire. Many men have their shrines: Richard’s was Saratoga. He wrote with equal dexterity – and insight, by the way – about fillies and felons.

Finally, he was a teacher, sharing his passion and his knowledge with countless young journalists who came under his gaze, wherever he may have encountered them. In places high and low. His most effective was of sharing was by his example.

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Pat Sheehan

Patrick Sheehan’s news career started 43 years ago at WILI Radio in Willimantic.  His first TV news job was in 1968 at WHCT-TV in Hartford where he was an anchor and political reporter.  He moved back to radio for two years, working at WDRC Hartford and WINS in New York.  Then it was back to TV news anchoring at Connecticut Public Television, WTNH in New Haven, WFSB in Hartford and then spending 10 years at Channel 61, WTIC-TV where he worked until 1999.

Pat left journalism to pursue a new career in investment management and is manager of a major investment firm in Hartford.  But he has continued his involvement in public affairs and journalism.  He helped found the Connecticut Television Network and serves as the chairman of the Connecticut Public Affairs Network, its governing board.  CT-N is the equivalent of CSPAN within the state which provides coverage of government hearings and General Assembly sessions.  He was voted as Connecticut’s Outstanding Newscaster several times in the 1980s and was given a Silver Circle lifetime Emmy award by the New England Chapter of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.  He won the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission E. Bartlett Barnes award.  He was the first broadcaster elected as president of the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in 1987.  Pat’s public service includes serving on the University of Connecticut Foundation Board, as a trustee of Cheshire Academy, and a director of the Manufacturing Alliance of Connecticut along with other civic activities.

Paul Lewis, former news director at Ch. 61, says of Pat:

“Pat was instrumental in launching FOX 61 News and for 10 years he anchored the newscast.  Pat was always one of the smartest people in Connecticut and he had tremendous recall of newsmakers and their intertwined relationships. On election nights, when it’s mostly unscripted, Pat knew the candidates down to the smallest race in the smallest town and knew that this candidate’s father had been a state rep back 20 years earlier or that candidate once was a college intern for the deputy assistant under-secretary of the State Department of Obscurity.”

Paul Giguere of the Connecticut Network said:

“As Chairman of the Board of the Connecticut Network, Pat Sheehan has

personified the concept of visionary leadership.  He has championed the cause of transparency and accountability in government through CT-N, helping to establish its legitimacy and ensure its permanency as a Connecticut institution. Through his passion and uncompromising commitment to the principles of open government and journalistic integrity, he helped make CT-N itself uncompromising in its charge to make the process of government accessible to all.  Pat’s service to CT-N, the General Assembly and the people of Connecticut is incalculable.”

Pat served as a Second Lieutenant in the Army National Guard and holds a BA from UCONN in political science.  Pat and his wife, Jane, live in Cheshire.  They have four children.

 

 

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Tom Monahan

Tom Monahan has spent almost 40 years as a journalist.  His career started at radio at stations in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  He has been at WVIT-TV for 30 years.  He has covered hundreds major stories in the state.  From storms to murders to sports Tom has been on the scene.  He has won three Emmys, the first in 1984 for his coverage of the Steven Wood homicide trial.  He won another for a series on drunken driving.  But it is his reporting on politics that has made perhaps the biggest impact.

He was the first to report that Al Gore had chosen Senator Joe Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate.  He is credited with being first with the news the New England Patriots were coming to Hartford, and the first to report they were pulling out.  He also broke the news the Whalers National Hockey League team was leaving Hartford.  Tom is co-host of “Connecticut Newsmakers” on Channel 30 where he interviews politicians and government leaders every week.  He won the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle Award in New England for his long career to contributions to television news.  Tom attended Central Connecticut State University and the University of Hartford.  He and his wife Nancy live in the greater Hartford area.  He is on the air daily with stories from the Statehouse and beyond.

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Robert Estabrook

Robert Estabrook has lived several journalism lives.  He is best known in Connecticut as the publisher and editor of the Lakeville Journal.  He owned the newspaper for 16 years.  During that time the Journal covered a number of high profile stories including the 1973 Peter Reilly murder trial.  Because of the newspaper’s in-depth coverage, all charges were dropped against the 18-year old who had been accused of killing his mother.  For those stories and editorials the paper won the national John Peter Zenger Award for Freedom of the Press. He also has been active in Freedom of Information issues.  But his career extended beyond the boundaries of Connecticut.  He was a writer for northern Michigan weeklies and managing editor of the campus newspaper at Northwestern University, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1939.  He worked as an editorial writer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  He served four years in the Army during World War II and started a U.S. forces newspaper in Brazil.  After the war the Washington Post hired him as an editorial writer.  He spent 25 years with that storied organization including nine years as a foreign correspondent traveling to 70 countries.  He has been a Pulitzer Prize judge and with other New England editors, conducted journalism workshops in India.

Mitchell Pearlman, former director of the CT. Freedom of Information Commission said,

“Bob’s autobiography is entitled “Never Dull.”  When it comes to leadership for journalism’s sacred causes, his biography can aptly be called  “Always There.”  There are many who say they believe in the virtues of a free press and an open and accountable government, but too precious few who step forward time and again to vigorously preserve, protect and defend freedom of the press and freedom of information, both of which are so essential to democracy.  Bob Estabrook has been, and is, one of them.

People throughout the United States, and indeed the world, have benefited by his indefatigable leadership in journalism.  But we in Connecticut have benefited the most, and the most directly, when he and his wife, Mary Lou, decided to move to  Connecticut and buy the Lakeville Journal.  They not only

made that paper a great weekly newspaper, they became the paradigm for community-based, civic-minded journalism, while ever mindful that their local community is part of a broader statewide, national and international community about which every reader should be well-informed.  I’ve had the honor and privilege of knowing and working with Bob for over 35 years.  Thus I can say that without doubt, no one during this period has done more for good journalism and good government in Connecticut than Bob Estabrook.  He is indeed a hero and much deserving of this recognition.”

Mr. Estabrook died in November 2011. He was 93.

CT Journalism Hall of Fame: Al Primo

Al Primo was one of the original owners of the Cablevision franchise in Fairfield County, and helped create News 12 Connecticut, as well as News 12 Long Island. When he owned WNVR-AM in the Naugatuck-Waterbury area, he employed a six-person local news staff. Among his staffers was Chris Berman, now an icon on ESPN.  Primo was publisher of The Village Gazette in Greenwich, a weekly newspaper that won several awards for its coverage of the I-95 Mianus River Bridge in 1983. As consultant to WTNH Channel 8 in the mid-90s, he helped enhance the “Action News” concept.

Primo is known as “The Father of ‘Eyewitness News’ ” and is credited with revolutionizing local news with that format. His career included news directorships in Cleveland, Philadelphia, and New York. He became vice president of news for the ABC-owned TV stations before starting his TV news consulting firm, Primo Newservice, based in Old Greenwich. In 1999, Primo was the founder of one of the Internet’s first video news websites, ForeignTV.com.  In 2002, he helped create “Teen Kid News,” a weekly nationally syndicated newscast for teenagers. Primo earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Pitt, and a gift to his alma mater helped establish The Journalism Lab, one of the nation’s first electronic classrooms.

 

 

 

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