UC Journalism Hall of Fame

Altman is a two-time graduate from UC, earning a B.S. Political Science and Government (1968) and a J.D. from the College of Law (1974). He was Editor of The News Record (UC’s independent student newspaper) from 1967-1968. In 2011, the College of Arts & Sciences recognized him with a Distinguished Alumni Award as someone who made a significant mark on their profession, community, and UC. As a nationally known environmental advocate, Altman has testified before the U.S. Congress and has supported civic engagement as Executive Secretary of the Murray & Agnes Seasongood Foundation. Through his work at the Seasongood Foundation, Altman supported UC Journalism students with paid internships. He and his son Michael (also a UC Political Science and Journalism graduate) have generously supported UC Journalism students each year with the David and Michael Altman Scholarship. 

In the early 1970s, he covered UC for The Cincinnati Post, before hosting a Sunday talk show for a radio station based in Northern Kentucky. Later in the 1970s he became regular guest, and an occasional host for the “Make Peace with Nature” public affairs television program, which broadcast out of Cincinnati at WKRC TV, Local 12. In 1997 the program was nationally syndicated from New York City to San Francisco and aired for over five decades.

Conlin is the first UC Journalism Hall of Fame member to have earned a B.A. in Journalism at University of Cincinnati. This is because Journalism did not become a degree program until 2005 as part of the English Department. Like many other Hall of Famers, she was Editor-in-Chief for The News Record before she graduated in 2009. Conlin went on to become Managing Editor at F+W Media. She was also Copy Director for Advent Media Group, in addition to other work as a freelance writer, editor and artist. Sadly, Conlin passed away in 2021.

BieryGolick is a 2013 UC Journalism graduate, and currently a Senior Reporter for the E.W.  Scripps Company focusing on enterprise and in-depth visual reporting for WCPO-TV, Local 12 here in Cincinnati. Previously, he worked for Cox Enterprises after nine years at Gannett as part of the USA Today network and The Cincinnati Enquirer, where he started his career directly after graduation.

Cianciolo is also 2013 UC Journalism graduate, and currently an Opinion Editor for CNN Business in New York City, where she has been since 2018. Before that she was an Associate Opinion Editor for Fortune magazine (also in New York) for three years. Cianciolo has also served as an Editorial Assistant for Fitness magazine and Ladies Home Journal.

Hagedon took her B.A. in 2011 with high honors in 2011as a one of the Journalism program’s “top graduating seniors” and is now Editor-in-Chief of VMSD magazine, where she has worked in various roles since 2012. Previously, she was a writer for Venue Lifestyle and Event Guide, after interning at Cincinnati Magazine.

Jason Hoffman (2013) Hoffman graduated in 2013 with a degree in Journalism and Political Science. Like most of our Hall of Famers, and Young Alumni honorees, he was also Editor-in-Chief of The News Record while at UC. Since 2016, Hoffman has been Sports Editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer, and his work has also appeared in USA Today, Columbus Dispatch and Yahoo Sports. Hoffman is also a Marine Corps veteran and a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). 

Queeney is a 2011 Journalism graduate. He was the Photo Editor for The News Record and interned at CityBeat, the Enquirer and the Evansville Courier & Press. After graduation, he joined the photography staff of The Columbus Dispatch, eventually leaving to help launch The North State Journal, a state-wide newspaper in North Carolina. His freelance work clients include The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, ESPN and the Audubon Society. Queeney now directs visuals for Duke University’s School of Medicine. An alumnus of the Eddie Adams Workshop, he holds a hat trick in Ohio photography winning the Ohio News Photographers Association’s Large Market Photographer of the Year, Sports Photographer of the Year, and Monthly Clip Contest Photographer of the Year in 2014

Indianapolis Star Senior News Director Cindi Andrews has covered topics ranging from politics to business to investigative work during her journalism career. She got her start in journalism at Clear Fork High School, near Bellville, Ohio, where she resurrected the school paper. At UC, she contributed to The News Record throughout her undergraduate years and served as news editor before graduating in 1991. She has spent much of her career at The Cincinnati Enquirer, where she was an investigative/enterprise editor, business editor, opinion engagement editor, reporter (covering five different beats) and copy editor. Before joining the IndyStar, she was executive editor at the Evansville Courier & Press.

UC Emeritus Professor James C. Wilson wrote for the Santa Fe Reporter and The New Mexican newspapers in the 1970s. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1982, and taught journalism and literature at UC for 30 years, retiring in 2013. He helped establish a journalism major at UC in 2005 and a Department of Journalism in 2012. In addition to four scholarly books, Wilson has published two memoirs, two nonfiction books about Chaco Canyon, and nine titles in his Fernando Lopez Santa Fe Mystery series––a detective series set in northern New Mexico. His tenth Santa Fe Mystery is in press now.

Cheung is the editorial director of City Bureau, a nonprofit journalism lab in Chicago. Previously, she was the food and travel editor at the Chicago Tribune after working as a crime reporter in western Illinois and Wisconsin. Since moving to Chicago, Cheung has covered everything from the city’s finest restaurants to teacher strikes and the World Series. She is also a long-time board member of the Chicago chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. At UC, Cheung was staff reporter, college living editor, managing editor and editor-in-chief of The News Record before graduating in 2012.

Elgazzar is the senior staff photographer at The Enquirer, a position he has held since 2021. He joined The Enquirer staff in January 2015, after working at WCPO and The Dayton Daily News. He has covered the Cincinnati Bengals and Reds for the past 10 seasons, and traveled to Tokyo to cover 2020 Olympics (in 2021) for the Enquirer. In 2022, he was named Best Photographer in Ohio by the Associated Press Media Editors. At UC, Elgazzar started out as a reporter at The News Record, but soon pivoted to photography and served as photo editor and managing editor before graduating in December 2009.

Greene is an award-winning multimedia journalist at The Cincinnati Enquirer covering professional and college sports, news, features, drone piloting and podcast producing. At UC, Greene was The News Record’s first-ever online editor and also served as managing editor. He began his career as a photojournalist at The Morning Journal in Lorain, Ohio. After stints at The Columbus Dispatch and as a photographer and video coordinator for Ohio State University, Greene joined the Enquirer in 2015. He has won multiple Ohio Photographer of the Year awards and was part of the Enquirer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Seven Days of Heroin” series. He is also vice president of the Ohio News Photographers Association.

Lopez is a writer for The Morning, the flagship daily newsletter of The New York Times, where he covers politics, economics, crime, public health and other topics. Before joining The Times, he was a reporter for Vox from 2014-2021, where he relaunched the digital news outlet’s “Weeds” newsletter, and co-hosted the “Weeds” podcast that covered policy issues. While a student at UC, Lopez majored in journalism and minored in history, and served as a columnist and news editor for The News Record. After graduating, he was a staff writer for CityBeat, Cincinnati’s alt-weekly, from 2012-2014.

• Al Salvato
• Angelique Chengelis

Beryl Love, a Cincinnati native, is a 1989 A&S-Communication alumnus, and served as Editor-in-Chief of The News Record (UC’s independent student news media) during his time at UC.

As part of a distinguished career within Gannett, Love returned to his hometown in 2017 to become Editor and Vice President of News for The Cincinnati Enquirer and the Ohio Regional Editor for the USA Today Network. Previously, he held various positions within Gannett, including Executive Editor for USA Today. Love was also Executive Editor for The Reno Gazette-Journal, and from 1998-2006 was at The Cincinnati Enquirer as News Editor, and then General Manager of the Magazine Division.

Dr. William Strunk, Jr. (1869-1946) is an 1890 A&S graduate and author of the widely acclaimed compositional writing guide, The Elements of Style. Strunk earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University, where he taught English literature for over 45 years.

After his death, one of Strunk’s most famous students, E. B. White (author of the novel, Charlotte’s Webb) produced subsequent editions of The Elements of Style, which became known colloquially as “Strunk & White.” Strunk also served as a literary consultant for MGM’s film production of Romeo and Juliet (1936).

Kathy Y. Wilson is a longtime adjunct instructor for UC Journalism where she teaches opinion editorial writing, and was twice named a Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Knight Center for Specialized Journalism.  She is a featured opinion-editorial columnist for CityBeat, Cincinnati alt-weekly news media, a contributing writer for Cincinnati Magazine, and has won numerous awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Cleveland Press Club, the Associated Press, and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award.  

Wilson emerged as contributor for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” program, and her 2005 non-fiction book, “Your Negro Tour Guide: Truths in Black and White” took acclaim for its cultural and political commentary.  In 2015 Wilson was named the inaugural Hamilton County Public Library’s Writer-in-Residence, and in 2016 she was awarded the Rosa F. and Samuel B. Sachs Fund Prize for her contribution to civic discourse in Cincinnati. An assemblage of her writing, personal collection of art, racist artifacts and other memorabilia is featured through January 28, 2018, at Cincinnati’s Weston Art Gallery under the title: “Sanctuary: Kathy Y. Wilson Living in a Colored Museum.”

Michael Perry, a 1984 A&S-Communication alumnus, has a distinguished 30-year career in sports media, and professional communications.  He was assistant managing sports editor for The Cincinnati Enquirer, Life & Magazines Editor for Enquirer Media, and managing editor for GoBearcats.com.  

Perry is also the author of two books about the UC Bearcats men’s basketball team, and another about Xavier University’s men’s basketball team.  An adjunct instructor for UC Journalism, Perry teaches sports reporting and serves as the professional editorial adviser/consultant for The News Record, UC’s independent student news media.  In 2012 Perry was Director of Marketing & Promotions for the World Choir Games and is currently Vice President and Partner for Vehr Communications in Cincinnati.

Greg Hand is best known as “the voice of UC” where he worked for over three decades as a news editor, science writer, assistant vice president for public relations, and university spokesperson.

Before he retired in 2014, Hand accumulated multiple awards for his work, including recognitions from the Educational Press Association, Cincinnati Editors Association, and the Council for the Advancement & Support of Education. Prior to his tenure at UC, Hand was an editor, reporter and columnist for Western Hill Publishing Company in Cincinnati.  He is a 1974 graduate of UC with a B.A. in English Literature.

Mary George Meiners has built a distinguished career spanning three decades in media marketing, sales and entrepreneurship. Meiners was director of event marketing for Jacor Broadcasting, and then general sales manager at iHeartMedia before forming Meiners Group, an executive search firm, where she is CEO.

She is currently launching a new magazine in her native city of Louisville, Kentucky. Meiners took her B.A. in English Literature from UC in 1992 with certificates in Journalism and Creative Writing and was editor-in-chief of The News Record.

Merrill Goozner earned his bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Cincinnati in 1975 and graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1982. His prolific career includes several posts at The Chicago Tribune, including Chief Economics Correspondent, National Correspondent, Chief Asia Correspondent, and Regional Economics Correspondent. Goozner was also a Senior Correspondent at the Fiscal Times in Washington, D.C., and his work has appeared in several nationally prominent publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, The American Prospect, Washington Monthly, Slate.com and Salon.com.

In 2005, Goozner published a book, The 800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of Prescription Drugs, with the University of California Press. Goozner previously served as a Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan, and a journalism professor at New York University, where he taught business and economics reporting. In 2008, the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences honored him with its Distinguished Alumni Award.

Induction into the UC Journalism Hall of Fame is a special honor reserved for UC alumni who have excelled in the profession of journalism, or individuals who have made a significant contribution to the study of journalism at UC. Previous inductees include Luke Feck, William J. Keating, John Molloy and Mary Linn White (2009); Walt Handelsman and Ginny Hunter (2010); Jim Knippenberg and Henry Segal (2011); Dennis Janson (2012); Jon Hughes (2013); Kathy Doane and Cliff Radel (2014); Ray Locker, Lew Moores, and Kira Lisa Warren (2015).

Kira Lisa Warren was a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Cincinnati where she earned a certificate in Journalism and worked on The News Record staff.  Glamour magazine named her one of the top college women in the nation in 1978.  In a distinguished 30-year professional career, Warren was a copy editor for The Cincinnati Post for 22 years, and then editor of the Hamilton Journal-News and Middletown Journal before being named editor of Cox Media’s entire group of newspapers in Butler and Warren counties in Ohio. 

Warren led the digital transformation of the papers, which included daily webcasts and the development of a Spanish-language local news site.  During Warren’s tenure with Cox Media Group, the Associated Press, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Press Club of Cleveland each named her papers best in the state of Ohio.  She was a visiting faculty for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida, and in 2008 Cox Media recognized her with the Arnold Rosenfeld Editor of the Year Award.  Warren passed away in 2010 at the age of 54 after a battle with cancer.

Ray Locker earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Cincinnati in 1982 and built an impressive career at prominent news outlets over the past 30-plus years.  As the Washington enterprise editor at USA Today, he leads a team of reporters that covers the White House, national security, money in politics and health care.  As national security editor, Locker led coverage of the military, intelligence community and foreign policy.  

His editorship of investigative reporting projects has reshaped military policy, including the creation of a $50 billion program to build mine-protected vehicles.  Locker is author of a forthcoming book, Nixon’s Gamble: The Memorandum That Created a Secret Government and Destroyed a Presidency to be published in fall 2015.

Lew Moores graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1973 with a degree in political science.  While at UC, he wrote for the editorial page of The News Record and was the first editor of Clifton magazine, a student publication that was quickly recognized as one of the top college magazines in the U.S. by the Society of Professional Journalists for its narrative non-fiction coverage of the UC community and Clifton neighborhood.  Moores was a reporter and columnist for over 30 years, writing for The Cincinnati Post (1972-1990) and The Cincinnati Enquirer (1990-2002), covering police, the courts, politics and human-interest topics.  

As a freelancer, his work appeared in The Sunday Challenger and CityBeat.  Moores taught feature writing and advanced reporting as an adjunct instructor at UC from 2006 until he passed away in 2014 at age 64.

Cliff Radel’s colleagues at The Enquirer characterize him as the guy who basically knows everybody else in the city—or at least knows how to reach them. A native of the West Side, Cliff has deep roots in Cincinnati and has cultivated scores of sources over the years to tell memorable local stories in his 38 years as a reporter/columnist for The Enquirer. As an undergrad at UC, Cliff studied psychology and worked as a reporter for UC’s award-winning student newspaper, The News Record. While in grad school at UC in the 1970s, he freelanced for The Enquirer, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune.

In 1976, he landed his first full-time gig with The Enquirer, as a pop-music critic; almost two decades later, in 1995, he became a local news columnist for the paper. Since then, Cliff has piled up accolades as a top columnist in Ohio from the Press Club of Cleveland, the Associated Press of Ohio and the Greater Cincinnati chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). He has also written two books: the first edition of Cincinnati Moments, a Celebration of Photographs from The Cincinnati Enquirer (1999) and The Big Red Machine Edition of Cincinnati Moments (2000). 

Long before Kathy Doane began teaching aspiring journalists as an adjunct instructor at UC, she had honed her writing, editing and coaching skills at The Cincinnati Enquirer. Her journalism career began in 1978, when she worked as a writer/copy editor for Enquirer Magazine. Over the next 18 years at The Enquirer, as a features copy editor and later as an assistant features editor, Kathy wrote and edited daily entertainment and lifestyle pieces, profiles and arts/music features; supervised a team of nine reporters; and directed coverage of numerous beats.

In 1998 she joined the staff of Cincinnati Magazine, where she steadily moved up the masthead—serving as managing editor, deputy editor and senior editor—and racked up awards from the Cincinnati and Ohio chapters of SPJ, the Press Club of Cleveland and the City and Regional Magazine Association. By the time she retired in 2008, she already had three years under her belt as a journalism adjunct at UC. She is one of the department’s go-to  “utility-player” adjuncts, teaching a range of courses. In her arts reporting course, Kathy’s students attend ballet and theater performances, tour art galleries, and write engaging articles about the local arts scene, reflecting the keen journalistic skills they’ve sharpened under her expert guidance.

Let’s face it: There simply wouldn’t be a journalism department at UC if it weren’t for Jon Hughes.

Jon was 27 years old when he arrived in Cincinnati. Before he came here to teach in 1972, he’d done what a lot of professional journalists have done early in their careers: He schlepped around in a variety of odd jobs before he was able to wedge his foot into that proverbial door opening that every young journalist seeks. For Jon, this colorful assortment of gigs included delivering parts for a NAPA auto-parts store, selling Grolier encyclopedias door-to-door, running an amusement park ride in his hometown of Indianapolis, guiding canoe trips in Michigan, and being “on call” as a pallbearer for a local funeral home (the job requirements, Jon explains, were: a suit, ability to lift a casket, and no alcohol on breath).

He’d spent a few years in newsrooms, too—primarily in Detroit and Chicago—and had been an adjunct instructor at Jackson Community College in Michigan. He arrived at UC with a master’s degree from Ball State University in hand, as a bearded, bespectacled, earnest young writer. He spent the next 40 years tenaciously championing the need for a bigger and better journalism curriculum in the UC Department of English & Comparative Literature. This required a carefully measured and strategic level of higher-academic political maneuvering that eventually—just last year, at the close of the 2011-12 academic calendar—resulted in the UC Department of Journalism. Along the way, Jon inspired and guided the careers of hundreds of young journalists, continued to actively contribute to the field by writing articles and shooting images for a vast array of media outlets, and recruited and mentored a ragtag faculty of working-journalists-turned-educators who saw the worth of his vision and happily jumped in the trenches beside him to help make it a reality.  

His long-time UC journalism colleague Jim Wilson describes Jon as a “relentlessly optimistic” individual whose stubbornness served the program well. “When one administrator or another would tell Jon ‘no,’ Jon didn’t listen,” Professor Wilson said. “All these years later, we have our department, and largely it’s due to the hard work of Jon. All of us in the program have been mentored by Jon in one way or another.” It’s a sentiment echoed by each year’s crop of journalism students, who flocked to Jon’s classes in masses—and not just to see his amazing photos from Cuba, the Amazon, Mexico, Thailand and his other worldly travels, but to learn something meaningful and authentic from the camera-toting, mustachioed, nearly mythological master that Jon Hughes has become. 

We are grateful to Jon for all he has done at UC.

Dennis Janson does not hesitate saying, “I’m living a dream.”

His curiosity, a love for language and reading, coupled with the ability to type 150 words a minute using all 10 fingers, are the underlying traits, skills and interests that Dennis has turned into a career spanning 35 years. 

For more than 18 years, DJ has been a sports anchor at WCPO-TV, where he’s established himself as one of the most respected and connected anchors in the Tri-State.

A 1968 Elder High School graduate, DJ has long been known as a reporter who routinely broke major local sports stories, from Johnny Bench’s retirement to Cris Collinsworth’s signing with the USFL to—more recently—Bob Huggins’ decision to stay at UC (after it was reported that he was leaving UC for West Virginia—that would happen later). Beating the competition to the story is one thing, but getting it right has always been the priority for DJ. 

“Being accurate is a given, along with being fair,” Janson says. “You can’t pull your punches when you are asking the questions people want answered. What has served me well is to recognize the line between the performance and the person. One is in play, subject to comment; the other isn’t, unless some personal situation is adversely affecting their job.”

Little did DJ know, when he walked into WSAI-AM in 1965 as a high school sophomore, that the broadcasting bug would bite him for life. 

An internship eventually him to the newsroom at the then-dominant rock ‘n roll radio station, which spawned other opportunities during his high school years and as he began his studies at the University of Cincinnati. It was while employed at WKRC-AM/WKRQ-FM that he made the move down the hall to their television affiliate, where he launched the career that brought him to WCPO-TV in 1984. 

That move led to DJ working with, rather than opposite, Channel 9’s long-time sports director, John Popovich. Their long and successful collaboration has become legendary. 

But Dennis Janson has never lost sight of his roots, his association with UC, or the many organizations and charities he’s helped by hosting or presiding over their event as master of ceremonies.

He sums it up by saying,” To think I’ve been able to do all this in my hometown is unusual in such a transient business. I have been truly blessed.”

• Henry Segal
• Jim Knippenberg

• Ginny Hunter
• Walt Handelsman

• John Molloy
• Luke Feck
• Mary Linn White
• William J. Keating