Honored by the Charles R. O’Malley Award for Excellence in Teaching

This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, March 23

I knew Charles O’Malley, or Chuck, as those who knew him called him, and it was him who took a look at the manuscript I had written in 1975 to train new journalism advisers and decided that CSPA would publish it. For that I am ever grateful. He came into my life as a publisher, but we became instant friends, taught workshops together and I often visited him in New York City. That is why receiving an award named after him is such a great honor to me.

Chuck is one of a group of dear friends—and mentors—who helped me at the start of my career. In addition to Chuck, there were Jim Paschal (University of Oklahoma), Benjamin Allnutt (Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS, Bethesda, Maryland), Marshall Matlock (Syracuse University) and Randy Stano (University of Miami).

We would conduct workshops around the country for journalism advisers and their students. In spring, it was always the fun trip to the CSPA program in New York City.

Today will be a day of reminiscing for me as I accept the Charles R. O'Malley Award for Excellence in Teaching. I will conduct a session about the state of storytelling and design today, and it will be my first appearance at the CSPA program since 1980 when I received the CSPA Gold Key, so it will be a day of discovery as to how those young journalists see things today and how they apply the craft they are learning to their high school newspapers and yearbooks.

Stay tuned for follow up and photos!

More about the O’Malley Award:

http://cspa.columbia.edu/honoring-people/charles-r-omalley-award