Journalism & Mass Communications Honors Leaders, Alumni

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications Alumni Association this spring honored five individuals with its top awards and joined with the Nebraska Broadcasters Association to present the Nebraska Broadcast Pioneer Award.

The college presented three Alumni Awards of Excellence, the Outstanding Advertising Award to Robert J. Reeder of Kansas City, the Outstanding Broadcasting Award to Richard Bates of Lincoln, and the Outstanding News-editorial Award to John Koopman of San Francisco. It also presented the Service to the Profession Award to Richard Chapin of Lincoln and the Dean's Award to Richard "Dick" Young of Lincoln. Max Brown of Lexington won the Nebraska Broadcast Pioneer Award.

The Alumni Awards of Excellence are given to prominent alumni of the college. Criteria for selecting winners are based on past and present work experiences, professional activities, contributions to print journalism, advertising or broadcasting, community or other service activities, and the nominee's individual achievements. A list of all past winners can be viewed at the college's Web site (http://journalism.unl.edu/alumni/winners.html).

Reeder is manager of advertising at Hallmark Cards Inc. in Kansas City. He manages the national brand advertising for the greetings and gifts business units as well as national advertising for the Hallmark Gold Crown stores, a network of 4,200 independent retailers. Reeder's first job out of college was assistant director of communications at the Nebraska Alumni Association. He earned a master of science in advertising degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., (1991). He worked for three years at Valentine-Radford Advertising in Kansas City and for five years at Applebee's Neighborhood Grill and Bar in Overland Park, Kan. He has volunteered on fund-raising projects for the Good Samaritan Project in Kansas City and the Kansas City Free Health Clinic. Reeder teaches aerobics and participates annually in summer productions at Shawnee Mission Community Theatre in the Park.

Bates is operations manager at Time Warner Cable, where he began his cable television career in Lincoln in 1968. Bates graduated from UNL with a degree in broadcasting and English and planned to become a teacher, but he enjoyed the opportunities cable TV afforded him in live broadcasting. His 35-plus-year career has included producing live television and today's ventures into high-speed Internet. He started as a part-timer, running cartoons and old black-and-white movies on the cable system's local channel. He became manager of Metrovision's outlying systems in 1980 and took over Lincoln's system in 1987. When Time Warner purchased the system in 1995, the company, recognizing his value, kept him as its operations manager.

Chapin, who is semi-retired, operates Chapin Enterprises, a Lincoln-based media brokerage firm, and owns five radio stations: two in Nebraska City; one each in Storm Lake and Spencer, Iowa; and a Christian station in Omaha. He celebrated his 50th year in radio broadcasting in 2003. Chapin was the first person to chair both the National Association of Broadcasters (twice) and the Radio Advertising Bureau. In 1974, the NAB awarded him the Distinguished Service Award, the nation's highest broadcasting award. After graduation from UNL in 1947, he was appointed secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in Atlantic, Iowa. He returned to Lincoln as convention manager of the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce and was later named assistant general manager of the chamber. In 1953, he took a job as an account executive at Lincoln's KFOR Radio and was named KFOR's general manager the next year. In 1970, he became president of Stuart Enterprises, which owned radio stations, outdoor advertising and an insurance company and had several real estate holdings. In 1985, Stuart Enterprises was sold to DKM Broadcasting Corp. of Atlanta. DKM retained Chapin as president to run the 10 Stuart stations. He left DKM two years later to open a branch office for R.C. Crisler & Co., a Cincinnati media brokerage firm. A short time later he went into the brokerage business for himself.

Koopman attended UNL on the GI Bill. He studied journalism, worked at the campus newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan, and interned at the Lincoln Journal until graduation in 1984 with a bachelor of journalism degree and a bachelor of arts degree in Spanish literature. He worked at the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, the Omaha World-Herald and a San Francisco Bay area newspaper before becoming night metro editor for the San Francisco Examiner in 1997. When the Examiner merged with the San Francisco Chronicle, Koopman worked for a year as an assistant metro editor and then returned to reporting. He was a general assignment reporter with the Chronicle when he was tapped to go to Iraq as an embedded reporter with a Marine infantry unit. There he covered the war from the invasion until the fall of Baghdad. The unit he was with made history when the troops pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein. He is working on a book about the Iraq war.

Young is chairman and CEO of Ayres Kahler, an agency that specializes in helping clients "grow, guide, refine and protect their brand." Young has been associated with the Ayres agency since before he graduated from UNL with a business degree in 1964. He began as an assistant production manager and moved up in the agency ladder, holding a variety of positions until he was named chief executive officer in 1980. Young and his wife, Ruthie, who is a 1963 UNL journalism grad, are mainstays of the Lincoln community. They serve on many boards and chair various committees that serve this area of the state. In addition, Young and his agency have not only served as a role model for the advertising community in Lincoln, but also for the advertising industry in the state and the Midwest. Ayres also has provided internships and offered jobs to UNL students.

Brown helped organize the Nebraska Cooperative Council, which brought together approximately 5,000 ranchers and farmers along with 200 farm organizations and cooperatives to create radio station KRVN in 1951. KRVN, whose call letters stand for "Rural Voice of Nebraska," is a 50,000-watt, full-time station that devotes more time in service to agriculture than any other station in the United States. Brown earned bachelor's (1934) and master's (1936) degrees at South Dakota State College and also did graduate work at the University of Minnesota. He taught agricultural economics at South Dakota State from 1936 to 1946, with time out to serve as a major in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1941 to 1946. He served as executive secretary of the Nebraska Cooperative Council from 1946 to 1951 and served as manager of KRVN from 1951 until his retirement in 1979.

CONTACT: Michael Goff, Interim Asst. Dean, Journalism & Mass Communications, (402) 472-3045