Schieffer School names new Hall of Excellence honorees

Fort Worth, TX

10/27/2006

A Texas writer, a national leader in the Society of Professional Journalists, and two Texas advertising/public relations practitioners will be honored Saturday, Oct. 28 with induction into the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism Hall of Excellence.
    
The three inductees, announced recently by the Schieffer School, are writer Skip Hollandsworth, former long-time Society of Professional Journalists executive director Russell Hurst, Southwest Airlines vice president of special marketing Camille Keith, and sportswriter/advertising executive Jerre Todd.
    
“This year’s Hall of Excellence class has made outstanding contributions to a number of mass communications professions,” said Tommy Thomason, director of the Schieffer School.  “They demonstrate the quality of those associated with our program across a wide range of media-related fields.”
    
The induction will be held at the annual Journalism Exes Breakfast, held at Joe T. Garcia’s Restaurant.
    
Other members of the Schieffer School’s Hall of Excellence are journalism educators Warren Agee and J. Willard Ridings, CBS newsman Bob Schieffer, Broadway and TV actress Betty Buckley, newspaper editor Ken Bunting, sports journalist Dan Jenkins, online journalism pioneer Johnny Livengood and writers Bud Shrake and Gary Cartwright.
    
The Schieffer School offers majors in news-editorial journalism, broadcast journalism, advertising/public relations and international communication.


Skip Hollandsworth
    
Skip Hollandsworth,  an executive editor at Texas Monthly, is one of Texas’ best-known writers.  

Hollandsworth, who graduated in 1979,  has received several journalism awards, including a National Headliners Award, the national John Hancock Award for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism, the City and Regional Magazine gold award for feature writing, the Texas Institute of Letters O. Henry award for magazine writing, and the Charles Green award for outstanding magazine writing in Texas.

Hollandsworth has been a finalist four times for the National Magazine Awards, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, and his work has been included in such publications as Best American Crime Writing and Best American Magazine Writing. His nonfiction account of the murders of seven women in Austin, Texas in the year 1885 will soon be released by Harper Collins

In addition to his work at Texas Monthly, Hollandsworth has worked as a reporter and columnist for newspapers in Dallas, and he also has worked as a television producer and documentary filmmaker.

Russell Hurst

Russell E. Hurst was editor of the Skiff as a TCU undergraduate.  While still a student, he was a radio announcer for KXOL and later a reporter for the Star-Telegram.  After he graduated in 1952, Hurst worked in both newspapers and radio in Fort Worth and then went on to the University of Minnesota, where he earned a master’s degree.

He went to work as a reporter at the Minneapolis Tribune and moved on to the editorial page as a writer.  

He was named executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists in 1962, a post he held for a record 19 years, during which membership more than doubled.  One history of SPJ called him “the modern-day Mr. SDX” (SDX was the name before SPJ).  He received the Wells Key, SPJ’s highest honor to a member, in 1981.


Camille Keith

Camille Keith, a 1967 TCU graduate, is an original employee of Southwest Airlines who has risen through the ranks to become vice president of special marketing.
    
Keith is responsible for developing marketing strategies to special publics (such as senior citizens, children, women), as well as special projects in the 62 cities and 32 states the airline serves. Previously, she was director and vice president of public relations.
    
Before joining Southwest, she was a reporter for WFAA-TV. She is the first woman inducted into the Texas Tech School of Mass Communications Hall of Fame, and chaired Tech’s inaugural advisory board for the College of Mass Communications.    
    
In 2002, Keith was named a recipient of the Women of Excellence Award presented by Women's Enterprise and the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas, which recognizes individuals active in the community and the business world.


Jerre Todd

After graduating from TCU in 1957, Jerre Todd worked for the Fort Worth Press as a sports writer from 1953 to 1959, on a sports staff that included Blackie Sherrod, Dan Jenkins, Bud Shrake and Gary Cartwright.  

Todd was public relations director for the Colonial Country Club from 1960 to 1962, handling media relations for the PGA golf tournament and the Colonial Tennis Championship.  He negotiated the first national television contract with ABC for the golf tournament.  

He went on to work as a consultant with Hill and Knowlton Worldwide; Saunders Lubinski and White; and Cynthia Pharr PR.  He handled a number of well-known contracts, including:  Braniff Airways when the company successfully came out of bankruptcy; event marketing for the Cotton Bowl; event marketing for the Southwestern Bell Colonial PGA tournament; promotion consultant for Louisiana Downs and Remington Park hose race tracks, and promotion for such sporting events as the Coors Light Water Skiing Tour and the PGA Senior Tour.   

Todd began his own company, Jerre Todd and Associates (now Todd Company) a full service ad/PR company that served such clients as Six Flags Over Texas, the Miss Teenage America Pageant and the Miss Texas Pageant, the Star-Telegram, the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Dallas Cowboys, the Texas Rangers and the National Cutting Horse Association