Walters received the award at the press club’s annual Gridiron dinner Friday evening. Walters, who has covered Wisconsin’s Capitol since 1988, is senior producer for WisconsinEye, the state’s public affairs news network. Walters also served as the Capitol bureau chief for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Milwaukee Sentinel.

Before coming to Madison, Walters covered the Iowa Legislature and was managing editor of the Waukesha Freeman newspaper

For 20 years, Walters has also undergraduate reporting and writing classes at the school in addition to his full-time work as a reporter.

After receiving the award, Walters said he appreciated the support he’d received from a number of different corners.

“Thanks, UW-Madison School of Journalism, for giving me a chance to convince the next generation of journalists why what we do is important,” Walters said, adding, “Thanks, WisconsinEye, for letting me ask people — with and without titles — why they do what they do. And, thanks to my fellow Capitol reporters for holding the powerful accountable.”

Students in 2 sections of Intermediate Reporting created the UW Election Connection, which extensively covered the 2012 November election. That site placed in 2 categories: Best Website Design and Online Media: Best Multi Media Feature.

The Curb Magazine staff received a Best Website Design for Curb Online. Emily Genco received an award for Best Single Feature Story Over 30″ for Rising Above: One mother’s journey to transcend poverty.  Melissa Grau’s story,
Solidarity Sister: 86-year-old nun champions change in health care, also was honored.

The winners in the category of Best Program or Special went to students who produced long form video journalism projects as part of a special topics course., taught by faculty associate Pat Hastings. Those winners are:

Dena Goldstein and 
Emily Osborne, 
”100 Block Battle” A look at the redevelopment of the 100 block of State St. in Madison, and the controversy surrounding the plan.

Dan Rose
and John Waters, “Capacity to Care” Bhutanese refugees now living in Madison, talk about life changing experiences.

Matty Neikrug 
”S.P.O.T. (Standing Parapalegic Omni-Directional Transport)” Five biomedical engineering students at UW-Madison are building a device that will allow a paraplegic surgeon to return to the operating room.

Bob Teague WNBC Reporter Who Helped Integrate TV News, Dead at 84 – NYTimes.com.

4:00-6:00 p.m. Thursday, April 4, 2013
Parliamentary Room
4070 Vilas Communication Hall
821 University Avenue
University of Wisconsin-Madison

This event is free and open to the public.

Teresa Alpert is Director of Crimea River Ltd., a London-based global brand consultancy that works with entrepreneurial businesses large and small.

Ms. Alpert is a Wisconsin native and graduate of the UW-Madison.  Her diverse career path began as special education teacher working with mentally and emotionally challenged teens and adults, an experience that has proven invaluable in the business world. She left the classroom to become an engineer and strategic marketer for ATT/NYNEX specializing in future technologies. After ten years in high tech, she entered the advertising business.

Over the past two decades, Ms. Alpert has led campaign strategy at McCann Erickson, DDB, Ogilvy, and Lowe and Partners Worldwide.  In that capacity she has helped burnish insight into resonant, results-producing campaigns for a roster of global brands including IBM, Unilever, Nokia, Compaq, Mobil Oil, L’Oreal, and iVillage.com. She has also helped smaller, emerging brands–from fashion labels to IT start-ups–find their footing, their voice, and their audience.

There were quite a few students at the Madison ceremony, and the UW was the recipient of many rewards.

UW Election Connection: 1^st place for Best Website: a collaborative effort between the J335 classes of Steve Walters and Pat Hastings.  The Web designers and editors were: Caitlin Furin, Jade Likely, Muge Niu. They produced the multi media Web site for the November election.

Within that site, we won 1^st place for radio news: Jocelyn Van Beek, who examined the use of social media in the November election.

Kyle Deckelbaum (Graduated May 2012) and Parker Gabriel won 2^nd Place for their Long Form Television documentary, “F.C.” (The story of Wisconsin softball player Mary Massei. The outfielder was diagnosed with thyroid cancer three weeks before she was supposed to come to the university. It was produced in J475 Special Topics: Long Form Video Journalism).

And, SJMC students won 2 of the 4 scholarships: Jocelyn Van Beek and Christopher Vosters each received a $2,000 scholarship for their academics and dedication to the field.

Karen Riddle, award-winning University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication professor, is exploring whether media consumption habits play a role in perceived violence in society.

Riddle, who has experience in advertising as well as media psychology, says her interest in this research stems from fears she had as a child.

Read more about her compelling work to date and where she hopes to head from here: http://www.news.wisc.edu/21540

It’s a long way from a village in Kyrgyzstan with no running water to a table in the Memorial Union’s Rathskeller on the UW-Madison campus.

But our story today connects them, through Erin Luhmann, a UW-Madison graduate student of journalism from Minnesota.

It also involves Africa and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, but that’s jumping ahead. First, Kyrgyzstan.

Luhmann spent two years in Kyrgyzstan — 2008 to 2010 — while serving in the Peace Corps. She learned of her posting while home in Minnesota with her family. There was a letter from the Peace Corps. Kyrgyzstan. She immediately thought, “That’s a lot of consonants in one name.”

Erin and her mom spread out a map in the kitchen and found Kyrgyzstan, west of China, in Central Asia. She would be teaching English to high school students. It proved a great adventure. Among other things, it made her realize she didn’t want to be a teacher.

Instead, back home, Luhmann enrolled at UW-Madison. She will get her master’s in journalism in the spring.

Two weeks ago today — the afternoon of Feb. 8 — Luhmann was working on an assignment in the Rathskeller when she got an email from the woman who serves as assistant to Nicholas Kristof, the decorated, globe-trotting columnist for the New York Times.

A month earlier, Luhmann submitted an entry to Kristof’s annual win-a-trip contest. Yearly since 2006, a student has been invited to travel with Kristof to a distant locale and help him report on the problems of poverty, health and social justice that are his bailiwick.

The trip is highly coveted among journalism students. The summer 2007 trip to the Congo was filmed, and the resulting documentary, produced by Ben Affleck, played at the Sundance festival.

This year, some 700 students applied for the trip. The Feb. 8 note from Kristof’s assistant was letting Luhmann know she was a finalist. The assistant would be in touch soon for a phone interview.

Luhmann experienced the first of a series of “adrenaline rushes” that continued through the weekend. She hardly let herself dream that actually winning the contest was a possibility.

Yet Luhmann, at 27, seems to possess a spirit — and resume, too — blueprinted for just such a journalism odyssey. Her grades are exemplary. She has traveled extensively and has a passion for shining a light where before there were shadows.

It did take a while for Luhmann to find her calling. Growing up in Shakopee, Minn., she played high school basketball and thought she might go into physical therapy.

She chose a small Minnesota college — Gustavus Adolphus — and played basketball there for a couple of years. Encouraged by a high school teacher, Luhmann majored in English and soon found herself considering journalism. It suited her restless streak. Most days, there was something new. If you didn’t know something, you asked. While in college, she interned for a Minnesota-based humanitarian magazine NEED.

Luhmann long considered the Peace Corps after graduating. She had traveled to China with her family, and to Thailand and Ukraine on study-abroad projects.

She lived with a host family while teaching at a rural school in Kyrgyzstan. There was a beautiful salt water lake nearby, and beyond it, mountains.

“I enjoyed it,” she told me this week, although she was frustrated by classroom management problems and the fact that humor — her coping mechanism — didn’t always translate well across borders.

It seemed likely the Peace Corps experience loomed large in Luhmann’s getting the Feb. 8 note from Kristof’s assistant saying she was a finalist. They spoke for 30 minutes by phone two days later. Erin had sent an essay detailing her experience and goals, along with a video of testimonials including two members of her host family in Kyrgyzstan. The assistant told her she was one of four finalists.

A day later, Luhmann interviewed by phone with Kristof himself, and the next day he called to tell her she won the contest. After offering congratulations, he talked logistics. The trip will happen this summer or early fall. Africa is the likely destination. Luhmann will blog for The New York Times and do videos.

Erin learned one other thing from their talk: Not even Nicholas Kristof has been to Kyrgyzstan.

Three School of Journalism and Mass Communication faculty members have earned major UW-Madison research and teaching awards. Lewis Friedland, Karyn Riddle and Dhavan Shah were recognized for their outstanding contributions.

Friedland earned a 2013-2016 College of Letters and Science Leon Epstein Faculty Fellow position for his research, teaching and service. The award honors Leon Epstein, UW-Madison political science professor and dean of L&S from 1965 to 1969. Friedland focuses on new communication ecologies, civic and citizen journalism, communication and society, and the role of media in civil society and public life.

Riddle earned the Class of 1955 Distinguished Teaching Award for her contributions in the classroom. In addition to her considerable scholarly acumen, Riddle has repeatedly demonstrated her accomplishments as a teacher. She focuses on media psychology and strategic communication at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including the effects of media on children.

Shah earned the Kellett Mid-Career Faculty Researcher Award. The award recognizes a UW-Madison faculty member who is seven to 20 years past promotion to a tenured position. Shah was recognized for the quality, significance and productivity of his research on the effects of information and communication technologies on social judgments, civic engagement and health management.

Congratulations to these exceptional SJMC faculty members on earning three of the university’s key honors.

Graduate students from all disciplines are invited to submit abstracts for the upcoming Communication Crossroads conference, hosted by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison.

Conference Details:
March 15, 2013
10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m
5055 Vilas Hall

Abstracts and papers due: March 1, 2013

This is a chance for emerging scholars to share research, give feedback and hone presentation skills in a welcoming environment. See how colleagues and potential collaborators from across campus are engaging issues of media, communication and society.

Submissions should include an abstract of between 300 and 400 words that provides a clear scope of the research topic and methods, along with a copy of the completed paper. Please indicate whether you would like to be considered for a poster presentation in addition to one of the panels.

Previous papers have used textual and content analysis, ethnography and in-depth interviewing, large-scale survey, and experimental design, among other methods. Papers must be student led. Faculty co-authors are acceptable

Please email jschoolgradconf@gmail.com for full abstract and paper guidelines, or to submit your abstract and paper.

Paul Ingrassia, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication alum, was named managing editor of Reuters in January. Reuters reports world events and offers business information services to many markets, including financial, legal and media.

Ingrassia, who has spent much of his career writing about the auto industry, worked for 31 years at The Wall Street Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones, as a reporter, editor and executive before joining Reuters. During that time, he received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize – along with Joseph B. White – for coverage of the crisis at General Motors. Ingrassia also wrote three books about the auto industry. His most recent book, Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars, was cited by Bloomberg as one of the most notable books of 2012.

Ingrassia earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before earning his master’s degree, also in journalism, from UW-Madison in 1973.