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Communication Alumni Hall of Fame 2011
The Department of Communication at the University of Washington inducted six new members into its Alumni Hall of Fame on Wednesday, Oct. 19 at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture. Read remarks from this year's inductees >>
This year's inductees are:
- J. Anthony (Tony) Angell: B.A., 1962
Prominent and respected artist and environmentalist - Jack Geraghty: B.A., 1956
Former mayor of Spokane - Shelby Gilje: B.A., 1958
Writer, editor and columnist at The Seattle Times
- Hal Newsom: B.A., 1952
Former president and CEO of largest advertising agency - Terrence (Terry) Tazioli: B.A., 1970
Newspaper journalist and television host - Betty Houchin Winfield: Ph.D., 1978
Missouri School of Journalism faculty
The Communication Alumni Hall of Fame Award is bestowed upon a University of Washington Communication graduate and is presented annually by the UW Department of Communication. The award is for outstanding alumni who are distinguished for their service and achievements over a period of years since graduation from the University of Washington.
Hall of Fame members are people who have “made a difference” in an important way: as prominent journalists (e.g., winners of the Pulitzer Prize), public servants, celebrities who have used that celebrity to help others, leaders in their field, devoted mentors to our students and academic stand-outs. They are people who did more than just have a job or career; they did it with great success and often with great dedication to others. Since its inception in 2004, 55 alumni have received this prestigious honor. Inductees are chosen on the basis of involvement and recognition in their community. This is judged by the number of people and organizations impacted by their involvement, the breadth of their impact, and the quality and quantity of evidence of national or international recognition.
The Communication Alumni Hall of Fame selection committee consists of all living members of the Alumni Hall of Fame and the department chair and alumni outreach manager. Committee members receive ballots in April and selection is generally determined in May or early June and the winners notified shortly thereafter.
You can nominate an outstanding alum for the 2012 Hall of Fame. Read more >>
J. Anthony (Tony) Angell: B.A., 1962
Tony Angell is a prominent and respected artist and environmentalist. His life’s work encourages aesthetic beauty and unflinching natural integrity, be it through artwork, publications, advocacy, or illustration. His work is included in close to 50 private and public collections across the country and is on permanent display at the Foster-White Gallery, one of Seattle’s oldest and finest art galleries. At age 17, he won a track and field scholarship to the University of Washington and did his undergraduate work in English and Speech Communication and master’s work in Speech Communication. He was signed with the first gallery he walked into, Foster-White. His illustrations and essays on Northwest wildlife became a regular feature in Pacific Search magazine. After beginning his career in the 1960s as a painter, he began to focus on sculpture, which he produces in his studios in Seattle and Lopez Island. He has written and/or illustrated 15 books. Books showcasing his work include Owls (1974), Ravens, Crows, Magpies and Jays (1978), and Marine Birds and Mammals of Puget Sound (1982) — all published by University of Washington Press. Four of his books, including In the Company of Crows and Ravens, have received the Governor's Literary Award in nonfiction (now known as the Washington State Book Award). Author, illustrator and sculptor, Angell has won numerous writing and artistic awards for his work on behalf of nature including the prestigious Master Artist Award of the Leigh Yawkey Art Museum. He has worked as a board member of Washington's chapter of The Nature Conservancy and has been actively associated with the Conservancy since 1973. He is an elected fellow of the National Sculpture Society. After 30 years in public education, he retired in 2002 as director of environmental education for the state of Washington, where he coordinated efforts to teach schoolchildren about the natural world, our place in it, and its importance to our physical, economic and spiritual well-being.
Read more about Tony Angell >>
Jack Geraghty: B.A., 1956
Jack Geraghty truly enjoys being a Husky in Cougar Country. He came west from Spokane to the UW in 1952 as a student in what was then the School of Journalism. After graduation, Geraghty edited the “Service Stripe” newspaper at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and then came home as a reporter for the Spokane Daily Chronicle. In 1964, he was elected as a Democratic Spokane County Commissioner, beating a Republican incumbent, unheard of in Spokane at the time. He was 29 years old, the youngest commissioner ever elected then or since. As commissioner, he spearheaded the consolidation of Sheriff and Spokane police and corrections functions into a single public safety facility that remains today. He left the county in 1971 to become vice president of Exhibitor and Guest Relations for EXPO ’74, the Spokane World’s Fair. The permanent legacy of that Fair is Spokane’s beautiful Riverfront Park in the heart of the city. After the Fair he founded and published “The Falls” weekly newspaper for two years. He then went into the public affairs consulting business. Under the aegis of two firms — Jack Geraghty and Associates and Alliance Pacific, Inc. (now headed by his wife, Kerry Lynch) — Geraghty helped coordinate a number of successful bond issue campaigns that changed the face of Spokane. They included a new central library and three branch public libraries; an expanded Spokane Convention Center; reconstruction and modernization of four of the city’s five senior high schools; construction of a new high school in the suburban Mead district; and several park and street improvement projects. In 1993, Geraghty was elected as the 39th mayor of Spokane. His legacy was a public-private partnership that ultimately led to the development of the Riverpark Square mall, the restoration of the historic Davenport Hotel and a general renaissance of arts, restaurants and entertainment facilities.
Shelby Gilje: B.A., 1958
Shelby Gilje worked for more than 30 years as a writer, editor and columnist for The Seattle Times. She reported on a variety of topics, including abortion reform, federal and county courts, features and general assignments. She also served as reporter and editor for The Sun, the Anchorage Daily News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the West Seattle News. While employed as a journalist, Gilje moved The Seattle Times’ “Troubleshooter” column from a question-and-answer format about streetlights and potholes to a column noted for advocacy, price surveys and issues such as Medicare HMOs. Additionally, she was active in the Consumer Protection Roundtable, president for two terms on the board of the Western Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and a coordinator of a Matrix Table for Women in Communications. She served for six years on the Washington State AARP Executive Council and continues to do advocacy work for the organization. She also served six years on the Board of Trustees for People's Memorial Association (PMA), two as president. PMA, founded here in 1939, is the oldest and largest nonprofit funeral-and-memorial cooperative in the U.S. and is dedicated to dignified service and reasonable prices with no sales pressure. Gilje volunteers for a writing project at the Nordic Heritage Museum, of which her late husband, Svein Gilje, was founding president. She is a contributing editor for an ethnic publication, the Norwegian American Weekly.
Hal Newsom: B.A., 1952
Hal Newsom graduated from Beloit with a degree in economics before moving to Seattle. Unable to find an ad agency job, he enrolled in the UW’s journalism school where he honed his skills in writing as sports editor of The Daily. He built his first advertising campaign with the introduction of a new restaurant, The Burgermaster. He entered the U.S. Army as a private destined for the OCS School at Fort Benning, Ga., but not before 16 weeks of basic training followed by leadership school. When he returned to Seattle in 1955 after his Army tour, he renewed his search for an advertising job in Seattle. Newsom started at Safeco when he first arrived in Seattle and moved on to Cole & Weber, where he stayed until his retirement. Newsom was president and CEO of Cole & Weber when it was the largest advertising agency in the Northwest. He wrote various TV commercials for Boeing, which aired on Monday Night Football. He is also responsible for the iconic Wien air goose ads. After 33 years, Newsom retired from Cole & Weber, having produced more than 2,000 ads throughout his career. He has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Chirripo; and climbed Mount Rainier twice. He has run marathons, is a master rower, bicyclist, and he sat on the board of Outward Bound of Seattle. Hal was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1995 and almost immediately plunged into activities related to the disease. He was one of the first board members of Northwest Parkinson's Disease Foundation, which developed the Booth Gardner Parkinson's Care Center at Evergreen Hospital. He sat on the board for eight years and helped create the facility to treat all aspects of Parkinson’s. He also wrote a book to help newly diagnosed Parkinson's people: HOPE-For the Newly Diagnosed Parkinson’s Disease Person. (All proceeds from the book benefit the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation.) He also sat on the board for Highline Community Hospital for 20 years and is an esteemed past president.
Terrence (Terry) Tazioli: B.A., 1970
Terry Tazioli is a principal in Little Man Productions, a professional story-telling service specializing in video, audio, print and online. He is also the host of Author's Hour on TVW in Washington state. The program features author interviews, lectures and readings and is devoted to non-fiction covering politics, public affairs, government, history and the Pacific Northwest. For 14 years, he was editor of Scene, The Seattle Times’ nationally recognized lifestyle section. Prior to that, he was a TV news assignment editor and then the producer of Top Story for KING-TV in Seattle. He worked at the East Side Journal in Kirkland, the Journal American in Bellevue, and he has taught news writing at the UW and Bellevue Community College. He continues to conduct occasional writing workshops. Extensively involved in the past two years in mentoring Communication journalism students, Tazioli helped the Department revise and teach (as a volunteer) the advanced design course. One of his most important experiences in journalism came in 1999 when he was editor of The Seattle Times features section. Tazioli reprinted a long essay by Washington Post writer Lonnae O'Neal Parker. Parker is black. Her essay, titled “White Girl,” described living with her mixed-race cousin, who identifies herself as white. The piece had run in The Post with limited response. Tazioli reprinted it with a call for readers to write back. Readers responded and the dialogue grew to such an extent that ABC’s Nightline did a story on it. Tazioli and Parker were invited to town-hall-style meetings around the country to talk about the issues raised by the piece. He has served on the Communication Alumni Board since 2006. He holds an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Betty Houchin Winfield: Ph.D., 1978
Winfield has been a member of the Missouri School of Journalism faculty since 1990. She also holds appointments in the Department of Political Science and the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. Before joining the Missouri Journalism faculty, Winfield was a professor of communication and American studies at Washington State University. She held post-doctoral fellowships at the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and the Gannett Center for Media and Politics at Columbia University. Among Winfield's four books are Journalism, 1908: Birth of a Profession and the award-winning FDR and the News Media. Her other publications include two monographs, 12 book chapters, and more than 80 encyclopedia and journal articles. Winfield has given numerous scholarly lectures and competitive papers on mass media history and White House communication. Among them are analyses of the free expression conflicts with the commander-in-chief role of the president, the models of attorneys general during wartime, and first lady relationships with the public and the media. Her current vein of research involves how journalists use history in their stories. In 2008, she received the 24th annual Covert Award in Mass Communication History. Also in 2008, Winfield received the American Journalism Historians Association's inaugural teaching excellence award. In 2003, Winfield was honored as the first journalism professor to receive a systemwide University of Missouri Curators' Professorship, which she will hold for the rest of her career at MU. In 2002, she received the MU Faculty-Alumni Award. The University of Missouri awarded Winfield its prestigious Thomas Jefferson Award in 1998 for an “academic career embodying the Jeffersonian principles and ideals in scholarship and teaching.”
