“I’m pleased and proud to be going in with the other five and to join the distinguished people who have already been named,” alumnus Robert “Del” Brinkman said. “It’s a highlight of my career.”
The recipients will join the ranks of the other 37 distinguished alumni including Nelson Poynter, Ernie Pyle and Gene Miller. There will be a celebration September 25, according to an IU press release.
“The j-school is where I found a home,” alumna Myrna Oliver said. “I always call it my crucible — it’s where I got into the bigger world, and I will always be grateful for that.”
John Ahlhauser
M.A. ’73, Ph.D. ’78
John Ahlhauser was a staff photographer for the Milwaukee Journal for 25 years. There, he covered a variety of assignments including the inaugurations of presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon, the civil rights movement in Mississippi and VISTA volunteers in North Carolina. Ahlhauser received both his master’s degree and doctorate at IU and taught photojournalism for 20 years at IU. The Counts/Ahlhauser Scholarship is named after Ahlhauser and his colleague Will Counts and is awarded to students interested in photojournalism.
Joseph Angotti
B.S. ’61, M.A. ’65
Joseph Angotti’s broadcast career has spanned some of the most influential stories of history, including the Watergate hearings, the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
During his time at NBC, he served as the executive producer of the Nightly News, later becoming the senior vice president of NBC and head of the News division. In 2006, Angotti was honored for his 22 years in broadcast network news with his induction into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.
Taik Sup Auh
M.A. ’73, Ph.D. ’77
After graduating from IU’s graduate journalism program in 1973, Auh worked as an assistant professor at Virgina Commonwealth University and later became the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea.
While in Korea, Auh wrote and edited five textbooks used in Korean universities. In 2011, the Korean government honored Auh with the Industrial Service Merit Award, which is given to those who have contributed to the development of industry and the national economy.
Paul D. “Del” Brinkman
M.A. ’63, Ph.D. ’71
Del Brinkman began his journalism career as a reporter in Kansas before dedicating his career to journalism education. He served as the dean of both the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas and the University of Colorado-Boulder.
He later worked as the director of journalism for the Knight Foundation and the president of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. For his work in the education field, Brinkman was inducted into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame. He is the only educator to be honored among this elite group of newspaper leaders.
Myrna Oliver
B.A. ’64
During Myrna Oliver’s 38-year career as a journalist, she covered memorable court cases, legal trials and deaths. While working at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in 1968, Oliver covered the infamous murder trial of Charles Manson.
She later worked at the Los Angeles Times covering courts and legal affairs for 15 years. Before her retirement in 2006, Oliver wrote for the obituary section in the LA Times, reporting on celebrity deaths including Jim Henson, Sam Walton and Leonard Bernstein.
Robert E. Thompson
B.A. ’49
Robert E. Thompson was well known for his political reporting through the decades. Thompson followed John F. Kennedy’s senatorial campaign and the campaign trail of Richard Nixon as a reporter for the International News Service.
Thompson later expanded his reporting career to newspaper management and became the Washington state bureau chief for Hearst Newspapers and then the publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Before his death in 2003, Thompson returned to IU as the Ernie Pyle lecturer on journalism.
