Time is running short for anyone who still needs a ticket for this year's D.C. Pro Hall of Fame dinner, which will be held June 15 at Maggiano's Little Italy Restaurant, 5222 Wisconsin Ave., Washington, D.C.
We'll also give out our annual Dateline Awards for editorial excellence. We had a very good turnout for this year's contest, which included new categories for online journalism and blogging.
Westwood One radio host Jim Bohannon, Radio-Television Digital News Association [RTDNA] President Emeritus Barbara Cochran, Editor-at-Large Jack Limpert of Washingtonian magazine and former Newsweek magazine Washington Bureau Chief Mel Elfin will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on June 15.
On the same evening, the chapter’s 2010 Distinguished Service Award will go to Sue Kopen Katcef of the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, the D.C. Pro corresponding secretary.
D.C. Pro members can buy one advance ticket for themselves and one for a guest for $75 apiece. Advance tickets cost $95 for nonmembers. A limited number of tickets will be sold at the door for $125 apiece.
Go to http://www.spjdc.org/dinner_tix_10 or send an e-mail to Stephenie Overman, the dinner chairwoman, at saoverman@comcast.net. You should have received a formal invitation in the mail by now.
Bohannon is host of “The Jim Bohannon Show” which can be heard from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. (ET) Monday through Friday on more than 500 radio stations across the nation. He also hosts the news magazine program “America In The Morning,” also heard coast to coast. Bohannon was voted one of "The 100 Most Important Radio Talk Show Hosts in America" by Talkers Magazine three years in a row and is a member of the national Radio Hall of Fame.
As president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, Cochran led that organization into its recent restructuring as RTDNA. Earlier in her career, she was vice president and Washington bureau chief of CBS News, executive producer of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” vice president of news for National Public Radio and managing editor of the Washington Star.
Limpert had been editing The Washingtonian, one of the nation's most popular and respected city magazines, for more than 40 years when he stepped down as editor last fall. During his tenure, the magazine won National Magazine Awards for public service, reporting, feature writing, and service to the individual. At an SPJ luncheon last fall, Limpert advised young reporters "to not become cynical or sophisticated — stay astonished at what you see in Washington."
During Elfin’s long service as Washington bureau chief of Newsweek, the magazine produced strong coverage of the Pentagon papers, Watergate and other big stories of the '60s, '70s and '80s. In 1987, Elfin was hired by U.S. News and World Report to revamp its system for rating the nation’s colleges and universities. As executive editor of “America’s Best Colleges,” Elfin and others combined the rankings with coordinated stories on American higher education to create a lucrative franchise for U.S. News.
Kopen Katcef is SPJ’s national campus adviser at-large and adviser to the University of Maryland student chapter. Sue is also a member of the board of SPJ’s D.C. Pro chapter and is president of the Chesapeake Associated Press Broadcasters Association.