Journalism honor roll

Since 1930, the Missouri School of Journalism has awarded its Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. Medalists are selected by the school’s faculty on the basis of lifetime or superior achievement in all areas of journalism. Past winners include Sir Winston Churchill, Christiane Amanpour, Daniel Schorr, Gordon Parks, Gloria Steinem and organizations such as the American Association of Advertising.

This year’s medalists will present Master Classes on topics related to their area of expertise and will be recognized at an awards banquet Wednesday evening at the Reynolds Alumni Center.

BILL KOVACH AND TOM ROSENSTIEL: Committee of Concerned Journalists

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a consortium of more than 7,000 reporters, editors, producers, publishers and academics concerned about the direction of American journalism. Created in June 1997, the group aims to clarify standards and principles in journalism by bringing journalists together to discuss their craft, its purpose and what sets it apart from other forms of communication. The committee conducted 21 public forums attended by more than 3,000 people nationwide, in-depth interviews with more than 100 journalists, editorial content studies and other critical research to identify the nine shared core principles of journalists. The results of this study were published in the seminal book “The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.”

REZA DEGHATI: Iranian photojournalist

Reza Deghati, who goes by the name “Reza,” is one of the best-known photojournalists in the world. A native of Iran now living in Paris, Reza has been working for National Geographic magazine since 1991. His travels have taken him from the Bosphorus to the Great Wall of China, from Lebanon to Afghanistan, from Rwanda to Sarajevo. His friendship with Afghan Commander Ahmed Shah Massud, who was assassinated in 2001 for his resistance against the Taliban regime, led Reza to found AINA, a nongovernmental organization developing independent media in Afghanistan. National Geographic television has produced many films on Reza’s work, one of which won an Emmy in 2002. In November 2005, Reza was awarded the medal of the “Ordre National du Mérite,” the French award for distinguished services in a public or private capacity.

CHUCK CURTIS: Chairman,Valentine Radford/Square One

Chuck Curtis is chairman of Valentine Radford/Square One Advertising, a Kansas City-based agency that handles advertising, media placement and sales promotion for Dr Pepper, Pizza Hut, the Dallas Cowboys, Sprint Yellow Pages, Dillard’s department stores and other leading brands and companies. Curtis handled the advertising for Texas Instruments’ introduction of hand-held calculators, digital watches and personal computers to its product line, and managed the introduction of 1,000 ATM’s into all 7-Eleven stores in Texas. Curtis has led significant community initiatives to improve and advance the Kansas City area, including advertising that led to voter approval of a $50 million bond issue to redevelop the Kansas City Zoo. While president of the State Ballet of Missouri, he helped the organization eliminate its long-term debt and secure a $750,000 grant from the National Arts Stabilization Fund.

KAREN BROWN DUNLAP: President of The Poynter Institute

Karen Brown Dunlap is president of The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a school dedicated to instruction for journalists and media leaders. Dunlap began her career as a reporter for the Nashville Banner in Tennessee and later worked as a staff writer at the Macon News in Georgia. She was a writer at the St. Petersburg Times and is a member of the board of directors of the St. Petersburg Times Publishing Co. In addition to teaching at Poynter and in seminars around the country and abroad, Dunlap has taught journalism at Tennessee State University and the University of South Florida in Tampa. Dunlap has co-written two books, “The Effective Editor” and “The Editorial Eye,” and was editor of the institute’s Best Newspaper Writing series.

JOHN SEIGENTHALER: Founder of the First Amendment Center

John Seigenthaler is a leading advocate of the First Amendment. In 1991, Seigenthaler founded the First Amendment Center, with offices at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and Arlington, Va., to preserve and protect First Amendment freedoms through education and exploration of free-expression issues. Seigenthaler has spent much of his life as a journalist, serving as an award-winning reporter for The Tennessean in Nashville, where he was also editor, publisher and chief executive officer. He is a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and founding editorial director of USA Today. Seigenthaler served as an administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the U.S. Justice Department during the early 1960s and was active in the civil rights movement as chief negotiator with the governor of Alabama during the freedom rides.

ZUBEIDA JAFFER: South African journalist

Zubeida Jaffer is an acclaimed South African journalist whose activism, despite great personal risk, made her a key figure in the anti-apartheid movement. During her early years as a reporter for southern African and Canadian news agencies, she was detained for two months by South African authorities for exposing police killings and later arrested for editing community and trade union papers. She was a member of the Independent Media Commission for South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, when she was also the first South African woman awarded the Foreign Journalist Award by the National Association of Black Journalists. In 1997 she became founding editor of the Parliamentary Bureau for Independent Newspapers, South Africa’s largest newspaper chain. Since 2003 she has held the position of political analyst for the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation.

CLIFFORD G. CHRISTIANS: Professor, University of Illinois

Clifford G. Christians is a scholar on issues of community, communications and ethics. He holds joint appointments as a professor of journalism and a professor of media studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He edits “The Ellul Forum,” which celebrates the work of Jacques Ellul, an intellectual known for his study of the character and impact of technology on the world. Christians serves on the editorial boards of 36 academic journals and has published essays on various aspects of mass communication and professional ethics. He has co-written numerous books including “Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays,” “Teaching Ethics in Journalism Education,” “Good News: Social Ethics and the Press,” “Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, Communication Ethics and Universal Values” and the forthcoming “Normative Theories of the Media.”