Last modified: Monday, January 7, 2013
Six inductees chosen for Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 7, 2013
Photo by Chris Meyer
The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame will induct its next class in ceremonies at the Indiana Memorial Union on the IU Bloomington campus.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame has selected six people to be inducted during a ceremony April 27 at Indiana University Bloomington in recognition of their distinguished careers in newspaper or broadcast journalism or journalism education.
Those to be inducted into the Hall of Fame are:
- The late Joe Aaron, a longtime reporter and columnist for the Evansville Courier. Aaron joined the Courier in 1955 after working for newspapers in New Mexico, Montana and Virginia. He began writing a five-days-a-week column for the Courier in 1957, continuing until he died of a heart attack in 1986 at age 57. Aaron won a National Headliner Club Award for best local interest column, but the greatest tribute to his appeal might be that the Evansville Courier & Press continues republishing his columns in its Sunday editions 26 years after his death.
- Melissa Farlow, a native of Paoli, Ind., who has been an award-winning photojournalist and a pioneer and mentor for women in the field. Farlow graduated from IU in 1973, after which she became a photographer for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Her work chronicling riots over court-ordered school desegregation helped the Courier-Journal win the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. She later worked for the Pittsburgh Press before becoming a photographer for National Geographic, for which she has gone on assignments around the globe. She has also been an instructor with the Missouri Photo Workshop for more than 25 years.
- The late Jerry Lyst, who was The Indianapolis Star's editorial page editor for nearly half of his 45 years with the newspaper. Lyst grew up in Indianapolis and joined The Star as a police reporter in 1955 after attending IU. He won numerous awards for his work as a Statehouse reporter, financial reporter and columnist and business editor before overseeing the opinion pages from 1979 until his retirement in 2000. His work during that time included a 1990 trip to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to explore the changes happening after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Lyst also was a past president of the Indianapolis Press Club and its foundation and a member of the IU School of Journalism alumni board. He died in 2009.
- The late Lowell Mellett, an Elwood native who was a newspaper executive in Washington before becoming a top aide to President Franklin Roosevelt. The start of Mellett's journalism career included being sent by The Muncie Star as a 16-year-old to cover the 1900 Democratic National Convention. He worked at several newspapers around the country and overseas during World War I before becoming editor of Collier's Weekly and later editor of the Washington Daily News in the 1930s. He held several posts in the Roosevelt administration before leaving government in 1944 to start writing what became a nationally syndicated newspaper column that continued until his retirement in 1956. He died in 1960.
- Jack Ronald, the longtime publisher of Portland's Commercial Review who has made numerous trips to former Soviet republics to advocate for an independent and free press. Ronald has worked at the Commercial Review since 1974, first as city editor and then as editor before becoming its publisher in 1982. His influence has extended far beyond his small-town daily newspaper as he has joined journalism training trips since 1998 to countries such as Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Myanmar. He's been blacklisted in some of those countries because of that work.
- Paul Tash, a South Bend native who has been editor, CEO and chairman of the Tampa Bay Times and chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Poynter Institute. Tash joined what was then the St. Petersburg Times after graduating from IU in 1976. He worked in several reporting and editing roles before rising to its top ranks. Under his leadership, the Times has become Florida's largest newspaper and won several Pulitzer Prizes. One of those was awarded in 2009 to the newspaper's PolitiFact.com initiative for fact-checking the statements and promises of politicians. That was the first time a primarily online effort was so honored.
"The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame grows stronger and becomes more significant each year because of the caliber of the people chosen for the 2013 class," President Ray Moscowitz said. "The board of directors deserves a lot of credit for the time and effort it took in selecting these six outstanding people to join the ranks of the IJHF."
The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame was established by the Indiana Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in 1966 to recognize and honor Hoosier journalists who have significantly contributed to the profession.
Housed at the IU School of Journalism, the Hall of Fame will conduct its induction ceremony at the Indiana Memorial Union in Bloomington. Tickets for the luncheon ceremony are $40. For more information, email the Hall of Fame at ijhf@indiana.edu.
For information on previous inductees and how to nominate someone for induction, visit the Hall of Fame's website.
