8A
FALL 2014
ADVISER UPDATE
‘He trained us to be the best’
Rich Holden honored for unwavering service to the profession
M
ore than 50 colleagues and admiring friends
gathered surreptitiously in northern New Jersey June 21 to let Rich Holden know how much he
has done for the Dow Jones News Fund, scholastic journalism and diversity in the media at large.
Holden left the Fund as executive director in
April 2014 after 41 years with Dow Jones & Co.,
22 of them at DJNF. He joins former executive
director Don Carter and Thomas E. Engleman as
a member of the Fund’s board.
His work as national copy chief for The Wall
Street Journal, launching the Asian Wall Street
Journal and promoting internships, elicited tributes
from Dow Jones executives, former Fund alumni
and graduates of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education’s Editing Program.
The surprise party was engineered by Bill Connolly, former senior editor at the New York Times
and Merrill Perlman, chair of the Education Fund
for the American Copy Editors Society, a fellow
Missouri alum and retired editor for the Times.
Holden’s wife, Mary-Anna, former mayor of
their hometown of Madison, N.J., devised a ruse
convincing Rich the gathering was an obligatory
political appearance. It worked.
Here are excerpts from collected tributes presented in a scrapbook:
FUNDRAISER — For several years, Rich performed a sort of striptease with WSJ pajamas
worn over his clothes to raise money for the
American Copy Editors Society’s scholarship
fund. Merrill Perlman, chair of the fund, shows
them off.
with total professionalism and remarkable fortitude,
patience and good humor.”
Peter Kann, former chairman,
Dow Jones & Co.
“At the Dow Jones boot camp, Rich kept telling us, as
he drilled us on common math errors that crop into
copy, we’d shine. Somehow, hearing him say it, again
and again, I began to believe it. Fifteen years later, I
owe so much of the confidence I carry with me every
night to lessons he imparted.”
Lamar Wilson, Universal editor,
McClatchy Publishing Center; poet
“Seven years after being a DJNF intern, I explained to
Rich how I joined The Wall Street Journal to write for
something called a ‘blog.’ The conversation went like
this:
Me: I just open up the blog, type in my post, and hit the
‘Publish’ button.
Rich: Well who edits it?
Me: It’s a blog. Sometimes I just publish it myself if no one
is around.
Rich, increasingly annoyed: But then who edits it?
Me: Somebody might edit it later. I just publish it to the
web first if I have to.
Rich: You do it yourself?”
Me: Yes.
Rich (choking on cigarette smoke at this point): You’re
kidding, right?”
Sudeep Reddy,
editor/reporter, The Wall Street Journal
During
his time at
USA Today,
Seigenthaler
was also
publisher of
The Tennessean, for
several years
taking flights
every week
between
Nashville and
Washington
to spend two
or three days
working at
each newspaper.
It was no
coincidence
that Seigenthaler was passionate
about the need for diversity in America’s daily newspaper newsrooms.
He was one of those editors who
“walked the talk” as we say about
news executives who not only articulate a passion for newsroom diversity,
but who go the extra mile to be sure
their own news organizations and
content reflect the make-up of their
communities.
Newsroom diversity was not the
first time Seigenthaler “walked the
talk.” In fact,
his most notable “walk”
nearly got him
killed.
As a longtime supporter of civil
rights and
racial equality,
his newspaper vigorously
covered the
movement
in Nashville
and published
editorials in
support of
racial equality.
When he
was sent by
Attorney General Bobby Kennedy to
Alabama to ensure the safe arrival of
Freedom Riders, Seigenthaler was
seriously injured when a Klansman hit
him in the head with a pipe in front of
the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Ala., in 1961.
Years later, when I was executive
editor of the Gannett-owned Montgomery Advertiser, I invited Seigenthaler to Alabama’s Capital City to
speak to my staff for our annual newsroom awards program. While he was
John Seigenthaler
in Montgomery, a film crew invited
him to walk along South Court Street
where he was injured more than four
decades earlier, to describe on film his
experience in 1961.
I had the pleasure of accompanying
him as he recalled the day the Freedom Riders arrived and were violently
ambushed as they tried to get off the
bus. Part of that bus station is now
the Freedom Riders Museum.
While working in Nashville at the
Diversity Institute, in a building that
would later be named the Seigenthaler Center, just outside the suite of
offices where I worked, there stood
a Lucite box with the same pipe that
was used to injure Seigenthaler many
years ago. It, too, was a history lesson, for inside the box the pipe was
accompanied by a letter from Bobby
Kennedy documenting the incident
and thanking Seigenthaler for his
service to his country.
The Diversity Institute that I led