NSPA & ACP THROUGH THE DECADES

1970

NSPA, JEA CO-HOST SPRING CONVENTION

“By popular demand, NSPA and JEA will hold a National Spring Convention,” Scholastic Editor reports. Up to this time, the organizations had not met together in the spring, and joint spring conventions continue through 1977

< PIONEER AWARD MARKS 50TH YEAR

NSPA’s 50th anniversary is celebrated on Nov. 26-28, at the 43rd annual conference at Chicago’s Palmer House. To honor individual contributions to scholastic journalism, NSPA presents Pioneer Award medallions to 50 people, plus 14 posthumous awards.

Joseph Murphy, CSPA director emeritus and founder, gives the response on behalf of all recipients. NSPA continues to recognize Pioneer Award winners each year.

1971

“THE NOW LOOK IN YEARBOOK”

NSPA publishes “The Now Look in Yearbook,” an instructional manual on design.

“The yearbook that ignores today’s Go-Go style will soon be Gone-Gone,” the book’s subtitle asserts, and the era’s top yearbooks will be untraditional and bold.

The manual was written by Glenn Hansen, former NSPA assistant director and an associate professor of journalism at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

1973

< WIKOFF NAMED EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Wally Wikoff, a former journalist and the vice president for development at Hamline University, is named executive director. Wikoff replaces Otto Qualle, who will now lead an advertising agency. Wikoff serves until October 1975.

Four Yearbooks Win Top Nspa Honor

Four yearbooks win the first Herff Jones Citation for Excellence, given to yearbooks earning All-American ratings with all five Marks of Distinction — at the time, NSPA’s top yearbook award. Pacemakers, limited to newspapers, are sponsored by the American Newspaper Publishers Association.

In 1974, the award becomes the Five-Star Award, with seven yearbook companies as sponsors, and in 1980, it joins the Pacemakers.

1974

VDTs ARRIVE IN COLLEGE NEWSROOMS

Student Press Conference

When Eleanor Roosevelt visited Ball State Teachers College, now Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, to deliver a convocation speech on political leadership in 1960, a student press conference was arranged after her talk with a student reporter and editor from the campus newspaper.

Professors Louis Ingelhart (left) and Earl Conn (right) facilitate the event. Conn wrote about arranging student press opportunities in the May, 1961, Scholastic Editor magazine.

Decades before desktop computers arrive, both commercial and collegiate daily newspapers install video display terminals for text editing. Scholastic Editor shows Kansas State University’s “TV screen editing terminals.”

MURPHY

HALL TO WASHINGTON AVE.

After 34 years in Murphy Hall, NSPA/ACP offices move elsewhere on campus to 720 Washington Avenue SE to provide more space for the journalism department.

Decades Of Service

Through the decades, Lucille Kildow serves NSPA/ACP in a variety of roles including acting director and assistant director. It was her work managing the critical service that she enjoyed the most. A noted yearbook expert, Kildow supervised judging for more than 35 years. In 1960, she trains staff members Phyllis Hayward and Janice Byce.

PACEMAKER AWARDS for newspapers

are presented at the all-convention NSPA awards banquet at Conrad Hilton Hotel on Nov. 28, 1964, by Hoyt Cater, publisher of the Elgin (Illinois) Courier-News to: Ann White, South Side Times, South Side High School, Fort Wayne, Indiana; Dierdre Mair and Steve Nagy, Rocket, John Marshall High School, Rochester, Minnesota; Jackie Sharkey, Trumpeter, Catalina High School, Phoenix; Charles Overby and David Thomas, Rambler, Provine High School, Jackson, Mississippi; Janice Gutman, Proviso Pageant, Proviso East High School, Maywood, Illinois.

Historic Meeting

In 1967, the top executives of the nation’s three scholastic press organizations appear together for the first time in the history of the NSPA/JEA conventions — Lester Benz, Quill and Scroll; Fred Kildow, NSPA/ACP and Joseph Murphy, Columbia Scholastic Press Association. The convention was held in Chicago at the Edgewater Beach.