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