Tag Archives: SMC

Brian Williams to receive SMC award this fall

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By Joe Brandt

Brian Williams, a 12-time Emmy-winner, will speak at the SMC awards ceremony this fall. | Photo courtesy of Justin Stephens, NBC

Brian Williams, a 12-time Emmy-winner, will speak at the SMC awards ceremony this fall. | Photo courtesy of Justin Stephens, NBC

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and six alumni will receive honors from the School of Media and Communication this fall, SMC announced Monday.

Williams, who has anchored NBC’s national news program since 2004, will receive the Lew Klein Excellence in the Media Award on Sept. 26. Additionally, six SMC alumni will be inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame.

Among these alumni are musician John Oates, of the duo Hall and Oates, and Tracy Davidson, a reporter and anchor from Philadelphia’s NBC 10.

Williams, a 12-time Emmy-winner, will speak to attendees at a special luncheon held in Mitten Hall.

Proceeds from the luncheon will fund approximately 24 SMC scholarships, according to the school’s press release.  Tickets for the reception and luncheon are currently $150 per person.

Past recipients of the Excellence in the Media Award include CNN’s Anderson Cooper, former “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg, Today Show host Matt Lauer and Robin Roberts of Good Morning America.

Oates commuted to Temple in the late 1960s and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1970. Oates and his musical partner, Daryl Hall, recorded songs in the WRTI studio, back when the station was student-run.

Davidson joined NBC 10 in 1996 as a morning anchor and received a graduate degree from SMC in 2006.

The other Hall of Fame inductees will be Gerhart “Jerry” Klein, chairman of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia, Larry Margasak, formerly of the Associated Press’ Washington bureau, Claire Smith, news editor at ESPN, and Meredith Avakian-Hardaway, director of communications and marketing at the Philadelphia Bar Association.

Joe Brandt can be reached at jbrandt@temple.edu or on Twitter @JBrandt_TU.

AxisPhilly to be disbanded

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By Marcus McCarthy

Temple’s Center for Public Interest Journalism announced Friday that its nonprofit news website AxisPhilly will cease operations, and a new project will be started in its place.

Started in 2012, AxisPhilly was intended to cover local civic issues but, according to a press release on the organization’s website, “did not achieve consistent local impact and fell short of serving as a collaborative hub for the emerging news ecosystem, both of which were goals at founding.”

Run through the university’s School of Media and Communication, the CPIJ, which oversaw AxisPhilly, will change its focus to a startup by former Digital First Media and WashingtonPost.com executive Jim Brady. The news startup will be called Brother.ly, according to Technical.ly Philly.

Brady’s startup will seek to “hit younger audiences that may not be using traditional journalism resources,” Temple’s journalism department chair Andrew Mendelson told        philly.com.

As well as starting Brother.ly, Brady will teach a course in entrepreneurial journalism at Temple. OpenDataPhilly, the city’s official open data portal that was run by AxisPhilly, will be managed by the CPIJ.

AxisPhilly last year received a national online journalism award for general excellence. The website, which had four full-time employees who will receive severance, was created with funding from a $2.4 million grant by the William Penn Foundation. With lacking readership and dwindling funds, the project needed work, something SMC Dean David Boardman said was not worth pursuing.

“The burn rate was such that this was going to come to an end one way or another unless we could find new funding,” Boardman told Philly.com. “It was our judgment that finding funding for this…was not where we wanted to put our energy.”

Operation of AxisPhilly will cease June 13.

Marcus McCarthy can be reached at marcus.mccarthy@temple.edu or on Twitter @marcusmccarthy6.