ISU Chapter of SPJ
honors Gapstur, Rud
Sept. 8, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AMES, Iowa – Eric Gapstur
and Ricky Rudd, who recently won national journalism awards, were honored by
the Iowa State Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists on Sept. 6.
Gapstur was named the top
editorial cartoonist in the country at the SPJ national convention in Chicago
on Aug. 25. His Mark of Excellence entries included cartoons on Social
Security, campus evangelism and freedom of speech.
Rud finished second in the Mark of
Excellence sports writing competition for his story on brothers from Kenya who
were members of the ISU track and field team.
Both Gapstur and Rud related to
students how they composed their works of journalism. They also spoke of the
importance of competing in Mark of Excellence and other journalism contests.
Both of them published their work
in the Iowa State Daily. Gapstur, Rud, the Daily, Ethos magazine and the
Greenlee Web team all won SPJ Region VII Mark of Excellence awards and moved on
to the national competition.
Joe Owens, vice president of the
chapter, also attended the Chicago conference and discussed the highlights,
including the keynote address by investigative journalist Bill Kurtis.
It was announced that next year's
nationals will be in Washington, D.C.
In other chapter news, SPJ
challenged ISUtv to a volleyball match Sept. 7. A pizza party was held
afterwards.
On Sept. 12, Randy Evans,
assistant managing editor of the Des Moines Register, will speak to the
chapter. Evans, a veteran journalist, will discuss editing, management and
business reporting.
Evans joined the Register's news
staff in 1974 after spending two years as editor of the onroe County News and
Albia Union-Republican, two weekly newspapers in Albia, Iowa. He began his
newspaper career on his hometown weekly paper, the Bloomfield (Iowa) Democrat,
while he was a high school student.
As a reporter for the Register,
Evans covered state and federal courts, transportation, and (working out of the
newspaper's bureau in Davenport) news along Iowa's eastern border. He became an
editor in 1984, supervising the Register's state news coverage. He was the
newspaper's metro editor before being named an assistant managing editor. As an
AME, Evans has had day-to-day oversight responsibility for the Register's state
and local reporting and editing staffs and the newspaper's Washington bureau;
the investigative team; features staff; photo department; online news
operation, and more recently, the farm/business staff.
He has directed the newspaper's
coverage of such news events as the crash of the United Airlines DC-10 jetliner
in Sioux City in 1989, the devastating floods across Iowa in 1993, the birth of
the McCaughey septuplets, and the Iowa caucuses and presidential campaigning in
Iowa. He also organized and directed two public-records "audits" involving Iowa
cities, counties and school districts. And two of his reporters have been
finalists for Pulitzer prizes.
Evans is on the executive committee
of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and is a former president of the
council, which pushes for openness in government. He also is on the board of
trustees of Student Publications Inc., the non-profit corporation that owns and
publishes The Daily Iowan, the student newspaper at the University of Iowa.
He is a 1972 graduate of the
University of Iowa journalism school.
Evans and his wife, Sue, have two
daughters: Sara, who is a registered nurse in St. Louis, and Katie, who is a
student in the Greenlee School.
For more information, contact
Chelsey Walden at cwalden@iastate.edu.
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