The National Association of Hispanic Journalists mourns the loss of trailblazing editor and media diversity advocate Deborah Howell. In many ways she made a difference. Howell annually selected the recipients of $25,000 in scholarships for NAHJ students offered by the S.I. Newhouse Foundation.

Howell, an editor who led the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ efforts to win two Pulitzer Prizes and who most recently was the ombudsman for the Washington Post, was killed in a road accident Jan. 2 while vacationing with her husband in New Zealand. She was 68.

She was considered an inspiration to many in a field long dominated by men. When she was editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the newspaper went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes. She then became chief of the Newhouse News Service Washington bureau in 1990, bringing with her a new concept of focusing less on national government and more on race, technology, religion, gender and sexuality, and topics which were innovative at the time.

Howell was the person in charge of working with NAHJ and other journalism groups on the annual disbursement of $25,000 in scholarships from the Newhouse Foundation, a task she continued to carry out even after leaving Newhouse in 2005 to join the Washington Post as an ombudsman. She retired from that position in December 2008.

Howell personally took a great interest in learning more about students and analyzing their qualifications and their potential as she studied the exhaustive scholarship applications that came in annually. Iván Román, NAHJ executive director, said she spent many hours and put a great deal of effort and thinking into selecting the students who she felt had the most to offer the world of journalism that she loved so much.

“Over the years, she has personally selected dozens and dozens of students who, in part thanks to her, are professional journalists now making us all proud and bringing their perspectives to the news media,” Román said. “She truly leaves a wonderful legacy at NAHJ, fueled by her passion to pave the way for women journalists and for journalists of color, just like she did for the many professionals she hired and mentored over the years.”

A Washington Post story after the fatal accident quotes Robert Hodierne, her deputy editor at the Newhouse bureau, describing Howell as having a managerial style that was alternately warm, cajoling and confrontational. The story states, “She engendered deep loyalty and occasional fear among her staff and was proud of her two contradictory nicknames: Mother Mary Deborah and the Dragon Lady.”

The funeral service for Howell is set for Friday, January 15, 2010 at 11:30 a.m. at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Click here for more information on the services from Richard Prince’s Jouralisms.

Click here for the story from The Washington Post.

Founded in 1984, NAHJ’s mission is to increase the percentage of Latinos working in our nation’s newsrooms and to improve news coverage of the Latino community. NAHJ is the nation’s largest professional organization for Latino journalists with more than 1,400 members working in English and Spanish-language print, photo, broadcast and online media. NAHJ is a 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization. For more information, visit www.nahj.org.