Hall of Fame

The Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame honors men and women who have had a significant impact on journalism in the state. Members are elected each year by vote of the Nevada Press Association board of directors.

  • Avery Stitser

    After her husband Rollin died in 1939, this charismatic woman carried on as owner of the Humboldt Star. Her distinguished career spanned from 1922 to 1960, when she sold the Winnemucca newspaper. She was the first woman to be president of the Nevada Press Association.

  • Dan De Quille

    Dan De Quille’s employment at the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City for 31 years during the later half of the 19th century made him the most prolific journalist in that newspaper’s history. Known as the Washoe giant, De Quille was best at penning “quaints” — short fictitious stories. His book The Big Bonanza is the definitive history of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode.

  • Bert Selkirk

    Known as the grandfather of The Record-Courier in Gardnerville, he was hired by the newspaper in 1893 as a printer and owned the paper from 1908-1944. During that time, The Record-Courier was regarded as a lively newspaper and one of the best weeklies in the far west.

  • Jack McCloskey

    After launching the Mineral County Independent-News in the Depression, McCloskey punctuated pomposity, phoned governors with answers and publicly spanked other newspapers. His weekly column “Jasper” spanned more than six decades. Born in Goldfield and reared in Tonopah, he started in the business as a paperboy.

  • Sally Lyda

    Lyda was editor of The Record-Courier in the late 1970s when the Gardnerville newspaper grew in size and achieved critical acclaim. She began working part-time at the newspaper and later reluctantly accepted editorship. Although she didn’t possess the temperament of a hard-bitten journalist, she took tough editorial stands.

  • Pete Kelley

    A former combat correspondent, Kelley was editor of the Nevada Appeal in Carson City from 1946-1953. Kelley himself made the news when he broke his leg skiing in 1951 and moved the Appeal newsroom into his bedroom. He also was a lobbyist and volunteer secretary-manager of the Nevada Press Association.

  • Dave Sanford

    David W. Sanford was the youngest of three family members to build the rural newspaper powerhouse Mason Valley News – “The Only Newspaper That Gives A Damn About Yerington” – and then continued his journalism career when the family sold the three-newspaper corporation to Gannett/Reno Gazette-Journal.

  • Guy Shipler

    Shipler was known as the dean of the capital press corps, a distinction gained from seven decades in journalism. His bust sits inside the front entrance of Nevada’s capitol. He joined Newsweek in 1941and eventually wrote for Business Week, Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, People, Fortune and others, as well as his weekly column on Nevada politics that appeared in newspapers around the state.

  • Ken Jones

    Jones, who began his long career as a photographer for the Las Vegas Sun in the 1950s, photographed a number of famous Las Vegas visitors, including first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, President Kennedy and Elvis Presley. Jones, known for his gentle nature and dedication, created a visual history of Las Vegas that cannot be duplicated.

  • Hank Greenspun

    The crusading founder and publisher of the Las Vegas Sun epitomized personal journalism. His front-page column “Where I Stand” became one of the most widely read columns in the state. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., a lawyer by training and a decorated World War II veteran, he arrived in Las Vegas in 1946 and founded the Sun four years later.

  • E.B. Steninger

    With Chris Sheerin, he co-owned the Elko Daily Free Press from 1945-1968. The University of Nevada, Reno graduate supervised production at the Elko paper.

  • Guy Richardson

    Guy Richardson started his career in 1963 as a linotype operator for the Nevada State Journal and the Reno Evening Gazette. He later became a wire editor and in 1975 the entertainment editor. During his nearly 30 years in the business, Guy became close friends with Sammy Davis Jr., Joan Rivers and other famous people, but he was never in awe of the stars. A bantamweight in size but a heavyweight in heart and talent, Guy's columns and stories ranged from humorous to heartbreaking.

  • Bryn Armstrong

    As an editor who poked holes in stories, a mentor to young reporters, a columnist who fought for civil rights and a reporter who exposed an adoption scandal, Armstrong's career in Nevada, at the old Reno Evening Gazette and then at the Las Vegas Sun, spanned nearly 30 years.

  • Chris Sheerin

    A Virginia City native, Sheerin was a member of the University of Nevada’s first journalism class in 1924. During a 41-year career in Elko, he was editor and co-owner of the Elko Daily Free Press. He also was a founder of Elko Broadcasting Co.

  • Ed Vogel

    Ed Vogel got his start in journalism as a teen in Michigan where a weekly newspaper paid him $1.50 a story to cover high-school sports. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he pursued his love of newspapers at jobs in New Mexico and Texas before joining the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1977.  At the Review-Journal, he became Nevada’s expert journalist on Yucca Mountain. Ed covered his first session of the Nevada Legislature in 1979 and was assigned as a full-time reporter and chief of the Capital Bureau in 1985. He covered 17 regular and 12 special sessions of the Legislature.

  • John Cahlan

    John Cahlan, who started in the newspaper business by hawking copies on street corners as a boy, rose to become editor of the State Journal Register in Reno before moving to Las Vegas in 1929 to work on the Las Vegas Review, of which his brother, Al, was part owner. When that paper merged with the Las Vegas Journal, he became editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a position he held until 1961. In Reno, he was a sports editor known for standing on Virginia Street to report updates of World Series games through a megaphone.

  • Elton Garrett

    Before the first spade of dirt had been turned to create Boulder City, Garrett was covering the birth of the town. Beginning in 1929 with the Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal, he moved two years later to Boulder City to become a one-man bureau of the Boulder City Journal, an edition of the Review-Journal. His “Nuggets of Boulder Color” column chronicled a historic time for Nevada and the nation through the stories of working folks constructing one of the engineering wonders of the world.

  • Brendan Riley

    Riley covered the capital in Carson City for the Associated Press for 37 years, a stretch that included six governors and 19 regular legislative sessions. He searched for missing aviator Steve Fossett, climbed mountains with a heart transplant victim and documented history being made at five national political conventions.

  • Barbara Greenspun

    Greenspun was instrumental in keeping the Las Vegas Sun financially alive for four decades as the “silent” partner of husband Hank Greenspun, the crusading founder of the newspaper. She was the gentle, persistent voice on the doorsteps of advertisers, bringing in cash during lean years. She helped the newspaper survive both a 1952 advertising boycott and a fire that leveled its plant in 1963.

  • Rollan Melton

    Melton went from a printer’s devil at the Fallon Standard to the president of nationwide Speidel Newspapers, a group of 13 dailies. He was a member of the Gannett newspaper chain board for 20 years and also served as publisher of the Reno Gazette-Journal. He eventually returned to the Reno newspaper to write a column.

  • Mike O'Callaghan

    The popular two-term Nevada governor known for his no-nonsense style joined the Las Vegas Sun as executive editor and columnist after leaving public office. In addition to being named a Sun executive, the decorated veteran of the Korean War and former high school teacher also became publisher of the Henderson Home News and Boulder City News.

  • Warren Lerude

    Lerude began his journalism career as a reporter for The Associated Press fresh out of journalism school at the University of Nevada, Reno. He went on to become editor and then publisher of the Reno Gazette-Journal. He shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for a series of editorials that attack brothel owner Joe Conforte.

  • Ty Cobb

    A kid from the Comstock, Cobb become one of the West’s newspaper legends. He was sports editor of the Nevada State Journal in Reno from 1937 to 1958 and later became the newspaper’s managing editor. He continued to write a column after his retirement in 1975. Cobb labored tirelessly for under-served athletes and lay people.

  • Mel Steninger

    The third generation of the Steninger family to own the Elko Daily Press, he and partner Earl Frantzen acquired the newspaper in 1968. A Missouri journalism graduate, he served as editor. He successfully challenged the constitutionality of a state law requiring newspapers to file reports of advertising expenditures by legislative candidates.

  • Royce Feour

    Feour wanted to be a sportswriter as early as the fourth grade, when he wrote an essay on it. He launched his career as a 14-year-old in the 1950s by covering prep sports for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he worked for more than 36 years after a five-year tenure at the Las Vegas-Sun. He won numerous awards, including the Nat Fleischer Award for excellence in boxing journalism.

  • Anne Pershing

    Pershing spent 25 years as the heart and soul of weekly newspaper journalism in Fallon, beginning with the Lahontan Valley News as a reporter in 1983. She moved to news editor, then was editor/general manager/executive vice president until 2003. With the Reno Gazette-Journal, she launched the Fallon Star Press in 2004 as its executive editor. For her work on the Fallon child leukemia cluster between 1999 and 2002, Pershing was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

  • Paul Gardner

    Born in Iowa, Gardner was publisher of the Lovelock Review-Miner from 1931-1966. He later wrote a gardening column for the Nevada Appeal. A former school superintendent, he worked his way through Drake University using his stenographic and typing skills.

  • Samuel Davis

    Samuel Davis became one of the most famous early newspaperman in Nevada through his work on the Territorial Enterprise and the Carson City Appeal. After working as a reporter in Virginia City, Davis became editor of the Appeal in 1879 and later managed the paper. The paper, so well known that it was copied all over the country, was a powerful influence in politics.

  • Cy Ryan

    Ryan, a hard-nosed reporter and workhorse, began his long tenure as a capitol reporter with United Press International in the early 1960s. When UPI closed shop, the University of Nevada journalism graduate and capitol press corps legend became the Las Vegas Sun’s statehouse reporter.

  • Wells Drury

    Wells Drury was known in the rowdy days of Nevada’s early mining camps as the “Fighting Editor of the Comstock.” An editor of the Gold Hill News, the Virginia City Chronicle and the Territorial Enterprise, he was noted for his high sense of duty to the public. After leaving Nevada, he became well known in California journalistic circles as an editor for several papers there.

  • Robert Macy

    During a 30-year career with The Associated Press, Macy spent 19 years as correspondent in Las Vegas, producing some 11,000 bylined stories and an estimated 15 million words. The University of Kansas journalism graduate became an AP legend when a pedestrian walkway collapsed at the Kansas City Hyatt Hotel, killing more than 100 people. He obtained a worker’s pass that allowed him into the building where he stayed throughout the rescue effort. His exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting ran worldwide.

  • Steve Sneddon

    A veteran of more than 30 years of covering high-school, college and professional athletics, Sneddon was considered the dean of Northern Nevada sportswriters. He was well known on the national scene as a preeminent boxing writer, and his reporting for the Reno Gazette-Journal in the 1970s and 1980s on issues such as low graduation rates among black athletes and sports gambling put him in the vanguard of sports journalism.

  • Tonia Cunning

    Cunning began her career with the Nevada State Journal in 1971 and joined the Reno Gazette-Journal with a merger in 1983. A graduate of Whittell High School and the University of Nevada, Reno, she had been a feature writer, feature editor, assistant managing editor and managing editor before being named executive editor in 1999. Cunning built a newsroom culture that integrated online, television partnerships and print.

  • Earl Frantzem

    Frantzen rose through the ranks of the Elko Daily Free Press from printer’s devil to ad manager, business manager, then co-owner and publisher. An accomplished photographer, he was the first to take pictures of a Nevada courtroom scene.

  • John Smetana

    Smetana, whose 40-year journalism career included 21 at the Reno Gazette-Journal, was the kind of newsman who made things better — the stories he edited, the newspapers he worked for, the reporters he mentored. Born in 1943 in Melrose Park, Ill., Smetana served in Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry “Blackhorse” Regiment, for which he received a Bronze Star.

  • The Hughes brothers

    Frank, Ted and Tony Hughes started working at the Mineral County Independent-News in Hawthorne as young men in the 1940s and 1950s and eventually performed nearly every job at the newspaper, from running the presses to selling advertising and writing news stories. They became sole owners in 1994. As editors, business managers and publishers, the Hughes brothers embodied the Nevada tradition of a locally owned, community newspaper.

  • Florence Lee Jones

    This longtime Las Vegas Review-Journal writer was the first important female journalist in Southern Nevada when she began her career in the 1930s. She covered hard-news stories when most women writers were confined to tea party beats. She later became the dominant scribe of Las Vegas society news.

  • Sue Morrow

    Morrow began her 29-year career at the Nevada Appeal in Carson City in 1962 and was the newspaper’s city editor for 20 years. Known as a stickler for accuracy on the editing desk, Morrow covered several high-profile stories, including the crash of the Paradise Airline gamblers’ special that killed 85 people and the Frank Sinatra Jr. kidnapping.

  • Ned Day

    After arriving in Las Vegas in 1976 to work for the Valley Times newspaper, Day quickly earned a reputation as a courageous, compassionate investigative reporter. Day, who later became a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, earned praise for his hard-hitting coverage of organized crime, the gaming industry and politics.

  • Marilyn Newton

    Known for her tenacity in chasing down breaking news and her dedication to the job, Newton is believed to be the first woman hired as a full-time newspaper photographer in Nevada. The veteran photographer came to the Reno Evening Gazette in 1963, starting as a girl Friday. Within a week, she wrote her first front-page story and within six months was carrying a camera. She switched to the Nevada State Journal and photojournalism full-time in 1967.

  • Mark Lundahl

    Through Lundahl’s career from night cops reporter at the San Bernadino Sun to managing editor of the Reno Gazette-Journal, his passion for writing about people and their stories never wavered. He became city editor of the RGJ in 1994 and spent a total of 23 years in a variety of supervising and editing positions. At the time of his death in 2010, he was also president of the Nevada Press Association.

  • Thomas Wilson

    This ex-reporter launched Reno’s first advertising agency in 1939. He was known as the “father of ideas,” and his creativity sparked the world’s first casino ad campaign (Harolds Club or Bust!).

  • Ruthe Deskin

    The Yerington native and graduate of the University of Nevada began her long career at the Las Vegas Sun in 1954 as assistant to publisher Hank Greenspun. She was warned in journalism school that women had no place in newspapers. Her long-running column in the Sun began as a memo she gave her boss. Without her knowledge, he published the memo.

  • Gerald Roberts

    A Tonopah native, Roberts went from high school newspaper editor to owner of the Tonopah Times-Bonanza and the Eureka Sentinel. He was an award-winning writer and a former president of the Nevada Press Association.

  • Gwen Bogh Carter

    A native of Oregon, Carter brought her journalism skills to Nevada to work at the Humboldt Sun and Lovelock Review-Miner in all aspects of the business — selling advertising, designing ads, writing, taking photos and designing pages. In 1991, she bought the Lovelock Review-Miner and, in 1999, added The Nevada Rancher. Known for her strong work ethic and sense of fairness, she combined her newspaper career with life on the family farm outside Lovelock.

  • A.E. Cahlan

    Cahlan was part owner and managing director of the Las Vegas Review-Journal from 1926-1961 and wrote a column for the newspaper called “From Where I Sit.” A third-generation Nevada, born in Reno, he was an honor student at the University of Nevada where he earned a degree in electrical engineering.

  • Jim Sanford

    Growing up in his family’s newspaper business, Sanford started working at the Mason Valley News in Yerington at age 8 as a printer’s devil. Following his graduation from the University of Nevada, Reno, he rejoined the News as a reporter and within five years was promoted to assistant editor and later to editor. By 1980, he was co-publisher, along with his father, Robert.

  • Walter Cox

    His homespun humor tickled readers for decades. He invented the famous Mason Valley News slogan: “The Only Newspaper in the World That Gives a Damn About Yerington.” A former state assemblyman, Cox wrote his columns on a 1924 Underwood.

  • A.D. Hopkins

    After starting his journalism career in Virginia and North Carolina, Hopkins came to Nevada in 1969 expecting to stay a short while and move on. More than 40 years later, he was still in the front row of history in the making as a reporter and editor for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

  • Sherman Frederick

    Frederick began his journalism career as a reporting intern at the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1976; 16 years later he became the newspaper’s publisher after a four-year stint as editor. In 1999, the journalism graduate of Northern Arizona University was named president of Stephens Media Group, formerly Donrey Media Group, owner of the Review-Journal and a number of other newspapers. He later founded Battle Born Media.

  • Jean McElrath

    Jean McElrath transcends words like adversity. “Guts” more accurately describes this remarkable woman, who distinguished herself as a Nevada journalist and author during a career spanning three decades. Her column “Tumbleweeds,” published in the Wells Progress for more than 20 years, was written while McElrath lay crippled from arthritis that had her bedridden since her teens. Later, when she became blind, Braille letters were taped to the keys of her typewriter. When a story broke, her sister Anita would load her gurney into a station wagon and bound across Elko County to get the story.

  • Claude Smith

    A Kansas native, artist, printer and editorialist, he was among the most influential newspaper leader of his era. He was co-owner of the prize-winning weekly Fallon Standard from 1926 until his death. He composed opinion pieces from his head onto Linotype keys.

  • Robert Davis

    Robert Davis started his life-long and illustrious journalism career as an 18-year-old compositor for the Carson City Appeal in 1887. The acclaimed writer eventually went on a tour of the world as a columnist for the old New York Sun. For an interview with Mussolini in Rome in 1926, Davis was made an honorary life member of the staff of The Associated Press.

  • Mark Twain

    After trying his luck at prospecting, Mark Twain began his literary career in earnest while writing stories for the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City. He developed and polished his writing style while on the staff of the famous newspaper. Twain believed that people, not facts, make news, and he always played up the human-interest side of a story. He came to the Territory of Nevada in 1861 and left three years later.

C.J. Hadley

September 27, 2019 Hall of Fame 8

C.J. Hadley, Holly Rudy-James and the late Vail Pittman were inducted into the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame last weekend in Ely in a luncheon held during the Nevada Press Association’s 95th annual convention. A brief biography of Ms. Hadley is posted below. Here’s a video of her moving acceptance …

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Holly Rudy-James

September 27, 2019 Hall of Fame 1

C.J. Hadley, Holly Rudy-James and the late Vail Pittman were inducted into the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame last weekend in Ely in a luncheon held during the Nevada Press Association’s 95th annual convention. Here’s a brief biography of Ms. James, along with photos from her induction ceremony. Holly Rudy-James …

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Vail Pittman

September 27, 2019 Hall of Fame 1

C.J. Hadley, Holly Rudy-James and the late Vail Pittman were inducted into the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame last weekend in Ely in a luncheon held during the Nevada Press Association’s 95th annual convention. Here’s a brief biography of Mr. Pittman. Vail Pittman Vail Pittman is the second Nevada governor …

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Don Ham

September 29, 2018 Hall of Fame 0

During a 43-year career in journalism, Don Ham led the Nevada Appeal in Carson City as editor for more than a decade before shaping coverage on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s city desk for the next 20 years. A native of Southern California, he was formerly editor of the Lompoc Record, …

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