Nevada Press Association The best in Nevada journalism since 1924
The Nevada Press Association on Saturday inducted four new members to the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame — Myram Borders, Bill Roberts, Alf Doten and A.L Higginbotham.
Myram Borders
A journalist for 36 years, including 25 years as Las Vegas bureau manager for United Press International, Myram Borders broke news, fought for Nevada’s Open Meeting Law and mentored young reporters.
Her efforts to allow cameras in the Nevada courtrooms were a major step forward for print and television journalism in Nevada.
She was a mainstay to keep the Las Vegas Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists alive, serving three terms as president.
In 1967, tipped at 8 p.m, that Elvis was marrying Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin Hotel, she went to the hotel and spotted Nevada Supreme Court Justice David Zenoff and asked him flat out if he was there to officiate. He knew better than to lie to Myram and confirmed it. The wedding occurred at 1 a.m. and Myram was the only reporter there, the first to break the story, another in a long line of her scoops.
“I grew up with Las Vegas,” Myram said on a PBS documentary called “Makers,” where she was profiled as a journalist.
She moved there from Kentucky at age 4 in 1940. The town was about 8,000 people. She went to the Fifth Street School and graduated in the class of ‘54 from Las Vegas High School.
Graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1958, she immediately entered journalism full time working for UPI and later for the Reno Gazette-Journal before returning to the struggling UPI.
After she retired from journalism in 1990, Gov. Bob Miller appointed her as commissioner of Consumer Affairs. Not surprisingly, the office that had operated under the radar nabbed media attention that helped consumers and hurt fraudsters.
In 1992, she became head of the Las Vegas News Bureau, a job she held for a decade before her final retirement in 2002. Again, her news instincts kicked in and it was her idea to preserve the priceless photos by putting them in a digital form, protecting decades of photographic history from deterioration.
Journalists read Myram’s stories to learn how to write better. Whether she was writing about the mob, gaming or nuclear energy, she was direct, accurate and fast. The competition between The Associated Press and UPI was ferocious.
Sometimes luck played a role in her scoops. She was driving home from work along Sahara Avenue when she heard an explosion and drove straight toward it. Mob associate Frank Rosenthal was standing next to his car. He’d just left Tony Roma’s restaurant.
In 1998, she wrote, he told her, “Somebody’s trying to kill me. I was set up.”
When she asked, “Who is trying to kill you, who set you up?” he didn’t tell her. Nor did he tell law enforcement.
She was honored by UNR as a Distinguished Alumni from the Reynolds School of Journalism in 2016.
— Jane Ann Morrison
Bill Roberts
Bill Roberts, a Tonopah native and University of Nevada, Reno graduate, was a mainstay for three decades for Central Nevada Newspapers, which he formed in 1975 with his parents and his wife, Bobby Jean.The newspaper group included some of Nevada’s most historic newspapers — the Tonopah Times-Bonanza and Goldfield News, Reese River Reveille and Eureka Sentinel. His father, Gerald, also is a member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Following graduation from UNR with a distinction in journalism, Roberts worked as reporter and copy desk editor on the San Rafael Independent-Journal in Marin County, Calif. He later worked for Chalfant Press in Bishop, Calif., before returning to Tonopah to help form Central Nevada Newspapers.
An active member of the Nevada Press Association, he was awarded “young journalist of the year” and, by 1980, was leading the NPA as its president.
Roberts was valedictorian of the Tonopah High School Class of 1969, an all-state quarterback and the first to earn the rank of Eagle Scout in Tonopah in more than 40 years.
After the newspapers were sold to Stephens Media, Robert continued to write regularly for the Times-Bonanza.
Also active in many Tonopah civic, fraternal and social organizations, he was a director of the Chamber of Commerce, the Tonopah Convention Center and president of the Rotary Club.
He served the Fifth Judicial District court on its juvenile probation advisory board.
His statewide involvement included serving on the Federal Judicial Merit Selection Commission through appointment by U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon. He also was a member of the advisory commission for Nevada’s 125th anniversary celebration as an appointee of Gov. Richard H. Bryan. Roberts also was very active in Freemasonry.
A.L. Higginbotham
A.L. Higginbotham taught journalism at the University of Nevada for 43 years and, in many ways, can be considered a founder of the Nevada Press Association and this Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame.
In 1924, a group of Nevada editors met in Austin and then, three months later, at the university in Reno with Higgonbotham to establish the Nevada Press Association as we know it today.
“Much of the credit for the association’s longevity goes to University of Nevada journalism Professor Alfred Higginbotham, affectionately known as ‘Higgy,’” former NPA director Kent Lauer wrote. “The Nevada Press Association, one member recalled, was ‘Higgy’s baby’ from its early years until 1967 when illness forced him to quit the association’s caretaker.”
Also in the 1920s, Higginbotham created the Silver Makeup Rule Award to recognize Nevada newspaper people for their longtime service to the industry and their communities. In 1948, the university and the Press Association created a Hall of Fame, housed at the university. Mark Twain, Dan DeQuille and Samuel P. Davis were the initial inductees. The next year, three more were added.
But the Hall of Fame lapsed for the next 49 years, until it was resurrected by the Press Association in 1998. That September, the 34 people who had been Silver Makeup Rule honorees were added to the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, and the tradition continues each year.
Several of his students — Bryn Armstrong, Paul Leonard, John Sanford, Chris Sheerin and Warren Lerude among them — are members of the Hall of Fame.
In addition to his role in teaching generations of Nevada journalism students, Higginbotham was a nationally recognized leader in the field and wrote numerous articles for professional and academic publications
Alf Doten
Alfred Doten moved to Nevada in 1863 to participate in the silver boom but soon began work as a reporter on the Como Sentinel, Virginia Daily Union, Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and Gold Hill Daily News, which he bought in 1872 and guided to a legacy as one of the leading newspapers of the Comstock.
In addition to his journalistic efforts, Doten is best known for his exhaustive private diaries, which he began writing when he boarded a ship to California in 1849 and continued until the last day of his life in 1903.
Upon his death, the 79 leather-bound volumes of his diaries were moved from one family attic to another until the University of Nevada acquired them in 1961. Author Walter Van Tilburg Clark spent years editing the manuscripts and, in 1973, published them in three volumes. They provided an unprecedented look at the daily life of the Comstock era and its cast of historical Nevada characters.
Doten wrote news stories, editorials and theater reviews, as well as short stories and essays on Nevada journalism. Ultimately, however, Doten went into debt and lost the News, then moved to Austin to edit the Reese River Reveille. An addiction to alcohol cost him his career and family, and he died alone in Carson City.