The National Association of Hispanic Journalists congratulates the 2003 Hall of Fame Inductees.
Each year, the NAHJ inducts journalists whose contribution locally or nationally has resulted in greater representation of Latinos in our nation’s newsrooms. The presence of these pioneers has improved news coverage or our country’s Hispanic community.
This year’s inductees are:
Mary Adelaide Gardner Professor, School of Journalism, Michigan State University
A retired professor of the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, Mary Adelaide Gardner is a pioneer in journalism education and a champion of a free press in Latin America.
Her name is synonymous with "First." Gardner was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in communication at the University of Minnesota; the first to earn tenure on the faculty of the School of Journalism at Michigan State University; the first to be elected president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and one of the first scholars to focus on the press in Latin America.
Gardner has published numerous articles and papers about Latin American journalism, including "The Press of Guatemala" and "The Evolution of the Inter-American Press Association."
She has also written extensively about issues affecting minority and Hispanic journalists in the United States.
In 1970, Gardner began a 20-year commitment to El Norte, a daily newspaper in Monterrey, Mexico. Every summer, she led various courses to train the staff, critiqued the paper and wrote the paper’s style manual. She also urged the daily to hire women. Today women are among the top editors at the paper.
In 1989 she helped create the Hispanics in Journalism Program at Michigan State University with a grant from the Gannett Foundation, which ensures the training of future Hispanic journalists.
Her accomplishments at Michigan State University resulted in her receiving the MSU Distinguished Faculty Award and her selection to the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 1997. Though she now has Alzheimer’s disease, Gardner continues to inspire those who advocate for a free and independent press.
Albor Ruiz, Columnist, New York Daily News
A columnist at the New York Daily News since 1997, Albor Ruiz has had a long career as a writer and editor. He was hired at the Daily News in 1993 as an editorial writer and was the first Latino member of that paper’s editorial board. He has also worked as an opinion page editor for The News.
Ruiz was the editor-in-chief of the first daily bilingual newspaper, El Daily News, as well as the executive editor of the nationally distributed Más magazine. He has also written opinion columns for Newsday.
Throughout his career, Ruiz, who was born in Cuba and has lived in New York since 1980, has never lost sight of the struggles of Latino immigrants, using his work as a journalist to give them a voice, portraying not only their heartaches but also their accomplishments. Whether writing for English or Spanish-language media, Ruiz’s journalistic mission has been to provide a voice for those whose stories often go untold by the mainstream media. In 1985, Ruiz gave the editorial pages of el diario-LA PRENSA an edge as their chief editorial writer and worked to cultivate a young reporting team. He has mentored scores of Latino and Latina journalists since then.
Hall of Fame Inductees 2002
- Paul Espinosa, independent producer, writer and director
- Félix Gutiérrez, author, educator and activist.
- Frank del Olmo, associate editor, Los Angeles Times
- Frank O. Sotomayor, assistant METPRO director and hiring editor,Los Angeles Times
Hall
of Fame Inductees 2001
