College Board of Visitors Adds Five Members
For Immediate Release August 23, 2005
COLLEGE PARK, MD – Five new members – three of them alums of the school – have accepted appointment to the Philip Merrill College of Journalism Board of Visitors by Dean Thomas Kunkel and Board Chair Eleanor Merrill. The appointments bring the board membership to 18, filling several vacancies caused by recent retirements.
The Maryland journalism alums are Bonnie Bernstein (1992), CBS Sports correspondent based in New York City; Ralph Crosby (1956), chairman and CEO of Crosby Marketing Communications in Annapolis; and DeWayne Wickham (1974), USA Today and Gannett News Service columnist. The other new members are USA Today editor Ken Paulson and Susan Patrick, executive vice president and co-owner of Patrick Communications in Ellicott City, Md., holder of an MBA from the university’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Vacancies occurred earlier this year when long-time members Charles Rowe of Fredericksburg, Va. (former editor/co-publisher of the Free Lance-Star newspaper); Marion Poynter of Warrenton, Va., former director of The Times Publishing Co. of St. Petersburg; and Washington public relations counselor Jeanne Viner Bell retired from the Board. The Board is chaired by Eleanor Merrill of Capital-Gazette Newspapers in Annapolis, a member since the Board was created in 1983 by then-Dean Reese Cleghorn.
“This group was the first of its kind to be created by a college on this campus,” said Kunkel. “They are a great sounding board for me and the faculty in our plans to move the college forward, and are extremely supportive in our fundraising and development efforts.”
The board meets each spring and fall. At the spring meeting held on campus, a cross-section of journalism students meets informally over breakfast with board members for valuable career and first-job advice.
Other members of the board are Jerry Ceppos (‘69 alum), vice president/news, Knight Ridder, San Jose, Cal.; Barbara Cochran, president, Radio-TV News Directors Association, Washington, D.C.; CBS Special Correspondent Walter Cronkite of New York (another original member of the Board); Tim Franklin, editor and senior vice president, The Baltimore Sun; Jane Healy, Pulitzer-winning ‘71 alum, vice president and editorial page editor, The Orlando Sentinel; Gerald Hroblak, president, The Richard Eaton Foundation, Chevy Chase, Md.; Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor, WETA-TV’s “Washington Week,” and senior correspondent, “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer”; Bo Jones, Jr., publisher and CEO, The Washington Post; Jay Kernis (‘74 alum), senior vice president for programming, National Public Radio, Washington, D.C.; Doyle McManus, Washington Bureau chief, Los Angeles Times; Washington Post columnist Bill Raspberry (another original Board member); and Will Sutton, Jr., Scripps Howard Visiting Professor, Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications, Hampton (Va.) University.
For more information contact: Frank Quine, 301.405.2394.