Woman's Press Club of Indiana (WPCI) has awarded its highest honor, the Kate Milner Rabb Award, to Gena Asher of Bloomington.
The award was presented May 19 at the organization's annual awards luncheon in Centerville.
Woman's Press Club was founded in 1913 as a professional organization for female journalists. Rabb, who was WPCI president from 1929 to 1931, was a columnist for the Indianapolis Star from 1920 until her death in 1937. In addition to her column, "A Hoosier Listening Post," she wrote books, essays, pageants and a historical novel based on her research into early Indiana towns that no longer existed. A hall at Indiana University was dedicated in her name in 1961.
The Rabb Award has been given since 1962 for excellence in journalism and service to the profession and the organization. Previous recipients include Hortense Myers, a reknowned Indiana political reporter who spent her career at UPI; Mary Benedict, a longtime IU School of Journalism professor, and award-winning Indiana photographer Ruth Chin.
A graduate of the IU School of Journalism, Asher was an award- winning reporter for the Bloomington Herald-Times before becoming fascinated with the electronic distribution of information. She returned to IU for two masters degrees from the School of Library and Information Science, and now is a free-lance writer and adjunct lecturer in the IU School of Journalism. she developes and maintains Web sites for a number of organizations. Her Rabb award particularly recognizes her efforts in updating and maintaining the WPCI Web site in the past year.