By Marion Garmel, WPCI secretary
Call it serendipity.
Sheryl Swingley is a member of the Department of Journalism faculty at Ball State University and a one-time award-winning WPCI member (she won the Honeycomb Award for most points in the communications contest in 1983 and 1984). She attended our awards banquet last May representing a student of hers who had won a WPCI scholarship. That’s when she learned that we would be turning 100 years old in 2013. A light bulb went off.
Sheryl proposed WPCI as a candidate for the Ball State Journalism Department’s 2013 Indiana Journalism Award, and we won. April 10, WPCI president Elizabeth Granger accepted the award on behalf of WPCI at the annual Ball State University Department of Journalism Eugene S. Pulliam Awards Program. She received a beautiful plaque, which will be displayed at the May 18 100th anniversary awards luncheon.
In a graceful acceptance speech, Granger said we have built upon a strong legacy from our founding members and continue to support future journalists with our writing contests, scholarships and literacy programs. We now have male members and work in all communications media, and believe there still is room for writers (now called content managers) in all areas of society.
WPCI also was represented at the awards luncheon by Julie Slaymaker, Jackie Davis, Donna Penticuff and Marion Garmel. Davis and Penticuff are Ball State alumni and Granger did some post-graduate work there.
This is a prestigious award and we are in good company. The Indiana Journalism Award, which has been given since 1965, also has gone to The Hoosier State Press Association, the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame Association, Eugene C. Pulliam, Jim Davis, Howard Caldwell and our own Hortense Myers, past WPCI and NFPW president and COA winner, who won in 1982. Hortense was the first woman in Indiana hired by a wire service. She worked first for INS and later for UPI, and was known as the dean of Indiana Statehouse reporters. She also is a member of the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.
