Alumni
Lew Klein Alumni in the Media and Excellence in the Media Awards, named in honor of respected teacher and seasoned media professional Lew Klein, were created to recognize those who have distinguished themselves in their profession and made significant contributions in their fields and communities. The celebration is the signature event for the School of Communications and Theater.
All proceeds from the event directly benefit the Lew Klein Excellence Fund, which provides scholarship for students to pursue internships, study abroad or create their own independent projects.
Event Schedule & Registration Info
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009
11:30 a.m.: Reception
12:15 p.m.: Luncheon and Program
Mitten Hall, Great Court, Temple University
1913 N. Broad St.
Philadelphia
Please register by Friday, Oct. 9 at myowlspace.com.
2009 Awards Recipients:
- Phil Jasner, '64, sports writer, Philadelphia Daily News
- Bernie Prazenica, '79, president and general manager, WPVI-TV
- Irv Randolph, '81, managing editor, Philadelphia Tribune
- Stephen J. Sansweet, '66, head of Fan Relations, Lucasfilm Ltd.
- Addie Collins-Zinone, '99, co-founder, Pro vs. G.I. Joe
The Excellence in the Media Honoree is Matt Lauer, co-anchor of NBC's Today
The Master of Ceremonies is Amy Caples, '85, SCT assistant professor
The Moderator is Terry Ruggles, anchor, NBC 10 News Today
The Excellence in the Media Honoree
Matt Lauer, co-anchor of NBC's Today
Matt Lauer has been co-anchor of NBC News' Today since Jan. 6, 1997. He joined Today in January 1994 as news anchor. From September 1992 to September 1996, Lauer was at WNBC-TV, the NBC Television Station in New York. There, he served as a co-anchor of the early morning newscast Today in New York from September 1992 until September 1994, and as a co-anchor of the early evening newscast News Channel 4/Live at Five from August 1993 until September 1996. He began substituting on Today as a news anchor in early 1993 before becoming the permanent news anchor in 1994.
Since joining NBC News, Lauer has conducted a number of newsworthy interviews. In 2007, for their first American television interview, Lauer talked with Prince William and Prince Harry of Wales to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana's death. Additionally, Lauer conducted an exclusive interview with New Jersey Gov. John Corzine after his near fatal car accident and traveled to Cuba for a rare opportunity to broadcast live from that country. In January 1998, he sat down for the first interview with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal made headlines.
In April 2000, Lauer marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon with an interview with former P.O.W. and Arizona Sen. John McCain, live from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.
In August 2005, Lauer co-anchored Today from Iraq, hosting the show from Baghdad's "Camp Liberty" where he interviewed Gen. Richard Myers and U.S. troops. Lauer co-anchored a special split show of Today in May 2004, during which NBC became the first American television network to broadcast live from the border of North and South Korea. In November 2002, Lauer sat down with 11 crew members from Flight 63, the trans-Atlantic flight that Richard Reid, a.k.a. the "shoebomber," targeted in December 2001. The interview aired in four parts on Today and was the focus of a full hour on Dateline NBC. When Operation Iraqi Freedom started in March 2003, Lauer contributed live reports from Qatar, the region that served as a staging area for American forces in the preparations for war. Lauer gave Today viewers' first-person reports from this critical battleground. In August 2004, on the eve of the Republican National Convention in New York City, Lauer secured an exclusive interview with President George W. Bush. This news-making interview covered topics such as Bush's strategies for campaigning in key battleground states, the war against terror and the mindset of the Middle East.
For what has become one of Today's trademark series for the nearly 10 years, Lauer has broadcast live from remote locations around the world for the "Where in the World is Matt Lauer" annual trip. His trips have taken him to dozens of locations around the world. The inaugural trip in 1998 took him to the Great Pyramids in Egypt, the Grand Canal in Venice, the Parthenon in Athens, the Taj Mahal in India and the Sydney Opera House in Australia. Since then, he had reported from such locations as the Great Wall of China, an oil rig off the coast of Scotland, Red Square in Moscow and Easter Island.
Prior to joining WNBC-TV, Lauer hosted a daily, live, three-hour interview program, 9 Broadcast Plaza, in New York from 1989 to 1991. Before that, his experience included hosting a number of weekly information and talk programs in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Richmond.
Lauer began his career in 1979 as a producer of the noon news on WOWK-TV in Huntington, W.Va. In 1980, he was a reporter on the station's 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.
Lauer is a graduate of Ohio University. He lives in New York with his wife, Annette Roque Lauer, their sons, Jack and Thijs, and daughter, Romy.
The Master of Ceremonies
Amy Caples, '85, SCT assistant professor
Before coming to Temple University to teach in 2005, Amy Caples spent more than 20 years in broadcast news. Caples was the co-anchor of the CBS3 morning show for six years and an Emmy-nominated reporter. While at CBS3 in Philadelphia, she covered breaking news throughout the Delaware Valley and also managed reporting franchises on parenting and consumer issues. After graduating from Temple in 1985, Caples spent the first half of her career in radio news as a reporter and anchor. She worked at stations in northern New Jersey and central Pennsylvania before returning to Philadelphia and KYW Newsradio 1060 in 1988. At Newsradio, she worked as a writer, reporter, business anchor and afternoon drive news anchor. In 1994, she made the switch to television and launched the Delaware Valley's first weekend morning newscast on CBS3.
The Moderator
Terry Ruggles, anchor, NBC 10 News Today
NBC 10 veteran newsman Terry Ruggles has been reporting stories for more than 30 years.
On March 29, 2004, Ruggles was promoted from reporter to anchor of NBC 10 News Today.
In his long tenure in the Philadelphia market, Ruggles has covered a variety of stories including local politics, the infamous MOVE event and the 9/11 tragedy. Ruggles has traveled to England, Germany, Haiti and Saudi Arabia to get the local angles to international stories. In 1993, Ruggles was named the WCAU-TV New Jersey reporter. During that time, he was responsible for covering the Garden State from Trenton to the shores of Cape May Point.
He joined WCAU in 1974 as a general assignment reporter. Shortly after that, he co-anchored the weekend news and reported the weather. After his tour of duty in the Army, Ruggles began his television career at WFRV-TV in Green Bay, Wisc., reporting news and sports. In 1972, he joined WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he co-anchored the news and hosted a weekly news program.
While serving in the Army from 1968 to 1971, he was chief of the television division at Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Indiana, where he managed all video facilities on the post. In 1965, he worked in radio at WTVN-AM in Columbus, Ohio. He landed his first radio broadcast position in 1963 at WCUE-AM in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where he was a sports reporter and worked in production.
Ruggles graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in education. He currently serves on the board of directors for both Philadelphia's Fireman's Hall Museum and Smith Memorial Playgrounds and Playhouse in Fairmount Park.
He and his wife, Maryjane, reside in South Jersey and are the parents of two children.
Alumni Hall of Fame Inductees
Phil Jasner, '64, sports writer, Philadelphia Daily News
Phil Jasner joined the staff of the Philadelphia Daily News in 1973. He was presented the Curt Gowdy Award for excellence in print journalism in 2004 by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and is a two-time Pennsylvania Sports Writer of the Year, as presented by the National Association of Sportscasters and Sports Writers. He is a member of the Overbrook High Alumni Hall of Fame, and has been inducted in to the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
From 1960 to 1964, he served as a reporter, columnist, assistant sports editor and managing editor of Temple News and spent a semester as sports director of WRTI-FM, the student radio station. During that time, he covered the Owls' basketball team in the National Invitation Tournament and countless other events at South Hall and the Palestra.
He spent his early professional days at The Mercury (Pottstown, Pa.), Montgomery Newspapers (Fort Washington, Pa.), The Times-Herald (Norristown, Pa.) and the Trentonian of Trenton, N.J.
He has covered the 76ers and the NBA for the Daily News on a full-time basis since 1981, after an earlier stint in the mid-1970s and some similar work for various suburban newspapers. He covered a portion of the Sixers' never-to-be-forgotten 9-73 season for the Trentonian of Trenton, N.J., and the Daily News, as well as the 1982-83 championship season and the 2000-01 run to the Finals. He has covered, among others, Hall of Famers Alex Hannum, Wilt Chamberlain, Jack Ramsay, Billy Cunningham, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Larry Brown and Charles Barkley.
Jasner is a past president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association and the Philadelphia College Basketball Writers Association. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Professional Basketball Writers Association during the NBA Finals in 2001. He also appears regularly on "Daily News Live" on Comcast SportsNet.
Along the way, he has covered high school sports, the Philadelphia Big 5, the Eagles and the NFL, the World Football League, the North American Soccer League and what was then the Major Indoor Soccer League.
He lives in the Overbrook Farms section of Philadelphia with his fiancée, Marcia Levinson, an award-winning assistant professor of pediatric physical therapy at Thomas Jefferson University.
Bernie Prazenica, '79, president and general manager, WPVI-TV
Bernie Prazenica has been president and general manager of WPVI-TV, the ABC-owned station, in Philadelphia since November 2007.
In his position, Prazenica has overall management responsibility for WPVI-TV/Channel 6 and all of its ancillary businesses, including three additional digital TV channels and 6abc.com, the station's Internet site.
Prior to his appointment at WPVI, Prazenica served as president and general manager of WTVD-TV in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., for more than five years.
Prazenica brought 25 years of experience with ABC to the top post at WPVI-TV. In addition to serving as director of sales and as an account executive at WPVI-TV, he has been sales manager at ABC National Television Sales in Philadelphia.
Earlier in his career, Prazenica was an account executive at WPTT-TV in Pittsburgh and at WRIC-TV in Richmond, Va.
Known in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle area for his active community service, Prazenica has served on the board of the Triangle United Way and as chair of its Media Council. He has also been a board member of the University of North Carolina School of Journalism Foundation; Downtown Durham Inc.; Communities in Schools of North Carolina; Big Brothers, Big Sisters of the Triangle; and the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters.
He currently serves on the boards of the Philadelphia Ad Club, Pennsylvania Convention and Visitor's Bureau, Police Athletic League, Cradle of Liberty Council – Boy Scouts of America, Variety – The Children's Charity, Welcome America Board of Directors and President's Advisory Board of Temple University (two-year term 2008-2010) as well as the Temple University School of Communications and Theater Board of Visitors and City Avenue Special Services District.
Prazenica is a cum laude graduate of Temple University with a BA in Communications, Radio-TV-Film. He and his wife, Patty, and their two children, Caitlin and Michael, reside in the Philadelphia area.
Irv Randolph, '81, managing editor, Philadelphia Tribune
Irv Randolph is the managing editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, the nation's oldest continuously published African-American newspaper, a position he has held since December 1994.
Under Randolph's editorial leadership, the Tribune has been named "Best Newspaper" by the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) in seven of the last 14 years. During that time, the Tribune has won more than 80 national awards. The NNPA, also known as the black press of America, is a 69-year-old federation of more than 200 black community newspapers from across the United States.
As managing editor, Randolph oversees the daily operations of the Philadelphia Tribune and its many editorial products, including a weekly educational supplement for Philadelphia public schools, a quarterly lifestyles magazine and Sojourner, a quarterly visitor's guide to Philadelphia.
An award-winning journalist for 25 years, Randolph has won state and national journalism awards on a variety of subjects including a mall fire, education and racial profiling.
He has frequently served as panelist for televised political debates for elective office including mayor, governor and U.S. senator.
Randolph is a 1981 graduate of Temple University School of Communications and Theater where he was an advertising account executive and contributing writer for Temple News. He was also a member of Temple Association of Black Journalists.
Randolph is a graduate of LEADERSHIP Philadelphia, a program for executives and community leaders, and was a fellow of the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.
His civic involvement includes serving on the advisory board and committees for the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Art Sanctuary.
Randolph has worked as a reporter and features writer for the Public Opinion in Chambersburg, Pa., and the Courier-Post in Camden, N.J., both Gannett newspapers. He and his wife, Carlotta, have three sons.
Stephen J. Sansweet, '66, head of Fan Relations, Lucasfilm Ltd.
Steve Sansweet has had two very different but equally fulfilling careers, one fairly unusual for a corporate organizational chart. Born and raised in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia, Sansweet knew he wanted to be a journalist from age 6, when he hand-printed the Hobart Street News and sold copies to neighbors for three cents. School newspapers, magazines and yearbooks followed, and a major in Journalism at Temple University's School of Business seemed preordained.
Sansweet got a lot out of his classes, many taught by working journalists. But he got as much out of a unique community of fellow students who put out the four-times-a-week Temple News. There was no better training, from reporting and writing to photography and editing — and even "paste-up" in the composing room to get the offset daily ready for the printer. He worked on the special issue reporting the assassination of John F. Kennedy; as two-term editor in chief a few years later, he called in late-night instructions to hand-print a banner headline announcing a next-day visit to campus of President Lyndon Johnson.
Sansweet got a then-rare summer internship at the Philadelphia Inquirer between his junior and senior years (he worked the night police beat); graduated magna cum laude and was named outstanding journalism graduate; and immediately went to work fulltime for the Inquirer after graduation. When (in early 1969) he told the then-city editor of the Annenberg-run newspaper that he was leaving to become a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, the executive expressed surprise. "But you're a good writer," he said. "I could see you leaving for the New York Daily News, but the Journal?"
After working in the Journal's Philadelphia and Montreal bureaus, Sansweet was transferred to Los Angeles, where he covered the gaming industry, aerospace, banking and Hollywood. He helped break the first stories on massive foreign bribery by U.S.-based multinationals and was part of a Journal team that won the 1977 Sigma Delta Chi Public Service Award; he was a Loeb Award finalist in 1990. Sansweet was a lecturer in business journalism at USC in the mid-1980s, a course that he created. He became the Journal's Los Angeles bureau chief in 1987 until 1996, when he made a leap of faith and followed his bliss — and passion — to become a director at Lucasfilm Ltd.
As head of Fan Relations, Sansweet has turned his love of the Star Wars saga into a second career, acting as the company's liaison to fans worldwide, and their liaison to the company. Sansweet has amassed the world's largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia, housed in a 5,000-square-foot private museum — a converted chicken barn — in Sonoma County, Calif., where he lives with his partner of 33 years, Bob Canning. Not abandoning his love of writing, Sansweet has 15 books to his credit, 13 of them on Star Wars, including a 1.2 million word encyclopedia in 2008 and his latest, due out in November 2009 from Abrams, Star Wars: 1,000 Collectibles – Memorabilia and Stories from a Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Addie Collins-Zinone, '99, co-founder, Pro vs. G.I. Joe
Addie Collins-Zinone, a 1999 graduate of Temple's School of Communications and Theater, has a diverse, yet unique mix of professional experience. During her time at Temple, Collins-Zinone contributed to Temple Update as the show's movie critic, a role she credits for helping her to work through her initial on-camera jitters. In addition to her journalism studies, Collins-Zinone was a member of the Temple University gymnastics team, having been awarded a full four-year athletic scholarship.
With the help of her news anchor idol, Katie Couric, Collins-Zinone landed a coveted internship at the Today show in the spring of 1999. She was later was later hired as a production assistant on the show, allowing her to learn from some of today's most influential and renowned journalists.
In Fall 2000, Collins-Zinone left Today to pursue her own on-air aspirations as a reporter and anchor WDTV Channel 5 in her home state of West Virginia.
In 2002, feeling a yearning to serve, she made the surprising decision to join the United States Army Reserve. After six months of basic training, she moved to California where she accepted a position as a field producer for Access Hollywood and later became a special on-air correspondent for the NBC entertainment program.
In the seven years since becoming a soldier, Collins-Zinone has risen to the rank of Staff Sergeant and is a two-time combat veteran, having spent two tours of duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a journalism and public affairs soldier.
During her two combat tours, Collins-Zinone worked as a broadcast journalist, hosting a daily four-hour radio show on Freedom Radio as "Mountain Mama" and producing television stories on military operations, including both the combat and humanitarian phases. Her stories saw widespread distribution on The Pentagon Channel and American Forces Network as well as local and national news agencies.
Collins-Zinone's military service did more than answer a patriotic calling; it has also sparked in her a need to give back through philanthropic endeavors. During her first combat tour in 2004, she founded "Kicks for Kids," a shoe collection initiative that asked Americans to donate their old shoes for distribution to needy Iraqi children. In just four months, Addie collected over 50,000 pair of shoes. For her work on "Kicks for Kids," she was featured on The Early Show's "Wonderful People" segment and was a guest on The Dennis Miller TV show.
Just prior to departing for her second tour to Iraq, Collins-Zinone and her husband founded the non-profit organization, "Pro vs. GI Joe." The organization works to boost the morale of America's military men and women by pitting them against their favorite professional athlete or celebrity through live online video game competitions from wherever they are serving around the world.
Most recently, Collins-Zinone was a Senior Communications Specialist for the USO until she left to work full time on "Pro vs. GI Joe," which requires extensive travel to sporting and military facilities around the world.
Collins-Zinone has received numerous awards including the Meritorious Service Medal, three Army Commendation Medals and three Army Achievement Medals. Most recently, she was named the 2007 Army Reserve Broadcast Journalist of the Year.
In 2008, Collins-Zinone re-enlisted for an additional six years of military service. Aside from her family, she says that being a soldier is the greatest privilege in her life and has truly helped define her career aspirations: when she's not wearing her uniform, she's dedicating her life to giving back to those who are.
Related Links
Access to Excellence: The 125th Anniversary Campaign for Temple
Contact
Development & Alumni Affairs
1938 Liacouras Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19122
Fax 215-204-3479
Ashley Lomery
Director of Development
215-204-1384
Katharine Wiseman
Assistant Director of Development
215-204-3055
Jeff Cronin
Assistant Director of Communications
215-204-9307