College Heights Herald To
Honor Two Journalists
October 27, 2003
Bowling Green, Ky. - An editor and a reporter at two of the nation's top daily newspapers will be recognized Saturday at the 52nd annual College Heights Herald Breakfast at Western Kentucky University.
Lynn Hoppes, executive sports editor of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, and Nikita Stewart, Essex County government reporter at The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., will receive the Herald Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism.
Both attended Western's Minority Journalism Workshop as high school students.
Hoppes, 36, is a December 1989 graduate of WKU with a double major in journalism and sociology. Stewart, 31, is a May 1994 graduate with a print journalism major.
The Herald breakfast, part of Homecoming activities at WKU this week, begins at 9 a.m. at the Garrett Conference Center Ballroom.
Hoppes, a graduate of North Hardin High School, is the youngest sports editor at a newspaper with a top 10 sports section in the country and is the only Asian American sports editor in the nation. Under his direction, the Orlando Sentinel, which has a daily circulation of 280,000 and 400,000 on Sunday, has won more than 87 state and national awards, including best in the nation several years.
Hoppes also is host of a Keep N Score, a daily sports talk radio show; executive producer of the south's No. 1-rated high school television show on an NBC affiliate; and editor and writer of Rush, the nation's only weekly extreme sports page, website and promotion.
A member of Associated Press Sports Editors group and Asian American Journalists Association, Hoppes has spoken nationally on diversity in San Diego, Seattle, Chicago,
New York and other cities and taught classes at Central Florida, several community colleges and the University of Florida. He was a speaker at a recent National College Media convention in Orlando. In the spring semester Hoppes will speak in classes at Western for a week through an American Society of Newspaper Editors partnership program.
Hoppes is married to Jill Duff, a Western graduate and an arts columnist for the Seminole section of the Orlando Sentinel.
Stewart, 31, is a graduate of Warren Central High School and has been a reporter at The Star-Ledger for four years. She previously covered Newark City Hall for the paper. Earlier this year, she was named "Bureau Reporter of the Year 2002." The regional managing editor cited her work on the Newark mayoral election and investigations of city and county government for the award.
In December 2002, the Garden State Association of Black Journalists awarded Stewart a first-place award for breaking news for a story about New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey's promise to build an arena in Newark. The association also awarded her second place for a feature story on the state police superintendent.
Stewart and fellow reporters, Jeffery Mays and Ted Sherman, recently won second place for daily news for the mayoral coverage in the 2003 Salute to Excellence Awards, sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists. Investigative Reporters and Editors also named Stewart a 2003 Minority Fellow.
She has spoken the past two years at the National College Media convention in New York City and has been a professional-in-residence at Western's Minority Journalism Workshop.
Stewart lives in Harlem with her husband, Terrence Moore, a WKU graduate of the history department, and their 4-year-old daughter, Ella.
For more information, contact Bob Adams at (270) 745-6278. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via E-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
