RSJ News
Alums honored at Homecoming lunch
10-24-2009
Former Los Angeles Times Frank McCulloch ('41) talks about continuing journalism's critical legacy at the Reynolds School Alumni Lunch Oct. 23.
A photo gallery of homecoming.
By Tammy Krikorian
Dozens of students, faculty, alumni and friends of the Reynolds School of Journalism attended school’s Homecoming Lunch on Friday to honor its Alumni Award winners and see the new First Amendment banner unveiled in the atrium.
“We’re tremendously proud of a lot that’s happening here,” Dean Jerry Ceppos told the group. “We’re revising the curriculum and taking other steps to keep up with the rapidly changing world of journalism.”
The First Amendment banner was a gift from the Dean’s Council, headed by Alumni Award winner Robin Joyce.
“It’s the most striking artistic representation of the First Amendment I’ve ever seen,” Ceppos said.
The Reno Gazette-Journal also provided framed copies for each classroom.
Alumni Award winners from the journalism school also spoke at the luncheon.
Joyce, who graduated from the journalism department in 1983 and earned his master’s degree in 2004, was ordained in February and is now pastor of Community, Marketplace and Church Relations at Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas. He previously worked in advertising and public relations for 25 years, and was honored for University Service.
“I had journalism in my genes growing up,” he said. His father was Nevada lobbyist Jim Joyce who ran 300 political campaigns, and his mother Nedra was a “glass ceiling breaker.”
“I learned so much from them about the value of integrity,” Joyce said.
Joyce said he was proud to be there when the First Amendment banner was unveiled, which to him stands for individual liberty.
Janet Trefethen graduated from the journalism department in 1971 and went on to become one of the first female CEOs of an American winery. Trefethen Family Vineyards in the Napa Valley has won numerous awards. Trefethen was honored for Professional Achievement.
She said her journalism background was useful when she and her husband John started the winery, at a time when there were only about 30 wineries in Napa Valley.
“Material needed to be written,” she said. “I knew what needed to be written, I wrote all the brochures and press releases … I still do.”
Trefethen said if today’s journalism students want to also be entrepreneurs she recommends they do one thing she didn’t -- take business classes.
"You never know where things are going to lead,” Trefethen reminded students. She spoke of a time that the cooking classes offered at her winery led to her cooking for Julia Child on Good Morning America.
“You’re very fortunate to be in the J department today, in journalism school,” she said. “It’s fermenting, bubbling, changing every day. You can help mold where journalism is going. I can’t help but think the Internet is going to broaden the First Amendment across the globe.”
Dean Ceppos introduced Frank McCulloch as “an icon for three generations of us” and “a true hero.” He told of a time McCulloch was covering the Vietnam war and was tired of seeing his stories that reported things weren’t going very well get spiked – so he quit.
McCulloch, class of 1941, was the chief of Time-Life’s bureaus in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, editor of the Los Angeles Times, managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner and executive editor of McClatchy newspapers. He received the College Distinguished Alumni Award.
McCulloch spoke of the importance of journalism’s role in the Internet age.
“I can’t see how an open society can function without information that has been gathered, processed and distributed,” he said.
