“Covering the Big Race”

“Covering the Big Race”

This is the second year of the symposium named for former Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Richard Wilson who also served as interim director of the UK School of Journalism and Telecommunications in the College of Communications and Information Studies.

Photo of former U.S. Sen. Walter “Dee” Huddleston
Walter “Dee” Huddleston

Photo of Bill Straub
Bill Straub

Photo of Tommy Preston
Tommy Preston

Photo of Judith G. Clabes
Judith G. Clabes

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 16, 2004) -- “Covering the Big Race” is the topic of the second annual Richard G. Wilson Journalism Alumni Speakers’ Symposium set for 4 p.m. Monday, March 29, in the auditorium of the William T. Young Library.

Alumni scheduled to participate are Bill Straub, who covers the White House for Scripps Howard Newspapers; former U.S. Sen. Walter Huddleston; and Tommy Preston, a former newspaper editor and a top political aide. Judy Clabes, president of Scripps Howard Foundation, will moderate.

“The topic seemed very timely this year as we look toward a presidential race, a U.S. Senate race, and the congressional and General Assembly races,” said Beth Barnes, director of the School of Journalism and Telecommunications.

Former U.S. Sen. Walter “Dee” Huddleston graduated from the UK radio program in 1949. He served as a tank gunner in the U.S. Army in Europe from 1944 to 1946. He was elected as a Democrat to the Kentucky State Senate in 1965 and served as majority floor leader from 1970 to 1972. In 1972, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and served two terms. He worked in radio, first as a program and sports director in Bowling Green and then as a general manager in Elizabethtown.

Bill Straub, a 1975 graduate, was a sports editor for the Kentucky Kernel, UK’s independent student newspaper. He followed his dream to Corbin and Paris before becoming a news reporter in Georgetown. In 1979, he joined the staff of The Kentucky Post. He became the Frankfort bureau chief in 1984 before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1994 as the regional correspondent for The Post. He joined the national staff and was assigned to cover the White House in January 2001.

Terence Hunt, a 1967 graduate, has been the senior White House correspondent for the Associated Press since 1981. He began his career with the Associated Press in Louisville in 1968. After military service and work in the AP bureau in Providence, R.I., he moved to the Washington bureau in 1974. He was assigned to cover the Senate in 1978.

Tommy Preston also wrote for the Kernel before graduating from the journalism program in 1956. He was named editor of the Carrollton News Democrat before he entered the U.S. Army. He returned to Carrollton in 1959 and purchased three newspapers and a publishing company, before the Army called him back to active duty. He served until 1962. Preston sold his newspapers in 1968 and formed a public relations firm, now called Preston-Osborne. He took a leave of absence from the firm in 1971 to help Wendell Ford, who had been elected governor, establish his new administration. When Ford was elected to the U.S. Senate, Preston worked with him for four years before returning to Lexington to his public relations firm, which he sold in 1997. He founded a new company, Preston Global, which deals with crisis management and counter-terrorism.

The moderator of the symposium, Judith G. Clabes, is also a 1967 UK graduate and a 1999 inductee into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Her journalism career began in 1971 as Newspaper in Education coordinator for the Evansville Printing Corp. She later became director of community affairs and associate editor of the Evansville Press. In 1978 she became editor of the Sunday Courier and Press. She was named editor of The Kentucky Post in 1983, a post she held until 1995 when she was named special projects director for the Scripps Howard newspaper division. The following year she was named president and chief executive officer of the Scripps Howard Foundation.