RSJ News
Warren Lerude, professor emeritus
05-21-2009
Dean Jerry Ceppos bestows the traditional Stetson hat honor on Warren Lerude, professor emeritus.
That’s what Dean Jerry Ceppos was told before the festivities began honoring longtime professor Warren Lerude May 20 at the Reynolds School.
“Everyone has a Warren story,” Ceppos repeated to dozens of students, former students, colleagues, newspaper reporters and First Amendment fans gathered in the Reynolds School atrium to toast Lerude. “And here’s mine.”
During a visit to campus before Ceppos became dean, Lerude gave him a ride to the airport.
“While he was driving, he explained in great detail the history of journalism at UNR – in great detail – without my asking,” Ceppos said. The group chuckled. “He expressed astonishment, pride and love at every twist and turn of events.”
When Ceppos arrived home, he told his wife he’d never seen a professor with such pride in his institution.
“And we wouldn’t be here today without him,” Ceppos said.
Lerude, 71, retires in June. He came to the University of Nevada as a 17-year-old student in 1955. After graduation, he worked for local newspapers, earning his way to the position of editor and publisher of the Reno Evening Gazette and the Nevada State Journal. In 1977, he won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. He came back to the University of Nevada in 1981 as a professor, teaching classes like First Amendment & Society and Media Leadership.
Lerude’s lauded, along with Nevada alum and Gannett executive Rollan Melton, for helping move journalism out of the College of Arts & Sciences and making it a free-standing school.
Former university president Joe Crowley has a Warren story.
“I was president of the university for three minutes – it could have been four – when I heard from Warren that he had retired from the newspaper business,” Crowley began. “He wanted to give lots of time and money to journalism. I welcomed him, knowing that I’d be receiving lots of phone calls with advice from Warren in the days to come.”
One afternoon, Lerude and Melton took Crowley out to lunch. They proposed, as they’d proposed before, for a free-standing journalism school.
“I was quite interested,” Crowley said. “The journalism program had created tremendous loyalty from its alumni.”
Crowley was impressed with the two alumni’s love for journalism and commitment to a successful journalism school.
“All that, plus their remarkable generosity in plying me with spirits on that occasion,” Crowley said.
Reorganization was possible if private funding could be obtained. Lerude and Crowley obtained the first major grant of $125,000 from Donald W. Reynolds, founder of the Donrey Media Group. The money underwrote the salaries of a group of Reynolds visiting professors in the early 1980s. Additional professors allowed the addition of new classes. Enrollment grew from 94 full-time students in 1980-81 to 149 in 1983-84.
That year, the Board of Regents created the Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism and Center for Advanced Media Studies.
Lerude and his wife Janet knew that another change was needed.
Journalism students were still pounding out stories on typewriters. The Lerudes donated
$40,000, a gift matched by the Gannett Foundation with another $20,000, to purchase 22 word processors, taking the school's first step toward its high-tech heritage.
Over the years, Lerude has worked with some of the best journalists in the country’s best journalism organizations. He was present as the first copy of Gannett’s USA TODAY rolled off the presses. He’s been offered high-paying jobs in other parts of the country. He chooses to remain in Reno.
“I am here because I’ve always put my family first and career second,” he said. “I wanted to raise my family here, where my wife and I were born. I’m also a Westerner. I’m a skier. I love the mountains.”
He has served as a frequent Pulitzer Prize juror, chairman of the California Newspaper Publishers Association Editors Conference, chairman of the Associated Press Managing Editors' Freedom of Information Committee and a member of the editorial board at USA TODAY.
In the late 1980s, Lerude, journalism Dean Travis Linn and Crowley began creating a plan for a journalism building. At their urging, Reynolds announced a $2.5 million challenge grant, inviting the university to match it for a $5 million building within three years. The school raised more than $300,000 from alumni. In 1989, the Nevada legislature a $2.2 million appropriation to complete the match of Reynolds’ challenge. Construction began in 1990. The building was completed in autumn of 1992 and occupied in January of 1993.
By then, Lerude had become the enduring face of Nevada journalism education.
Marilyn Melton, wife of Rollan, has a Warren story.
“Warren did a great job in newspapers,” she said. “But just as Rollan always wanted to be a columnist, Warren wanted to be a teacher. Now everyone knows him and his students are fond of him. They think of him as their special teacher.”
Former Sagebrush editor Brian Duggan has a Warren story.
“He got me my job,” Duggan said, simply. “He knew the editor of the Bismarck Tribune, who’d worked for Warren. He has connections.”
Duggan works as a reporter for the Bismarck Tribune.
Gary Hengstler, director of the Reynolds National Center for Courts and Media, also credited Lerude with Hengstler’s appointment. Though he’d been asked by the center to leave his job and come to Reno, Hengstler knew he’d have to be approved by the journalism school.
“And that was Warren,” Hengstler said. “He’s directly responsible for me being out here. And I’m appreciative.”
At the reception, Ceppos presented Lerude with the Stetson hat, like those given annually to speakers at the Ted Scripps Memorial Dinner. Lerude took the podium wearing the hat, then passed it to his wife. He applauded UNR President Milt Glick for “holding this institution together in perilous times.” He acknowledged students and colleagues.
“The joy of what we do in this building is the students,” Lerude said. Though retired, Lerude will continue to run the school's internship program.
That a renowned school of journalism resides at the University of Nevada, Reno, Lerude said, isn’t a given like it would be in New York or Chicago.
“God didn’t say there should be a great school of journalism in Reno, Nevada,” he said. “But we wanted to do it here in Reno, Nevada.”
The collective will of alumni, faculty and donors who cared brought the Reynolds School of Journalism into being and helped it blossom into a highly regarded school.
“This place has a great future,” Lerude said. “I’ll be at the door with a tin can. Your donations to the school are tax deductible.”
