Editors Day sees rise in attendance
An annual event that has waned in stature over the past several years took a step toward renewed prominence Saturday.
About 150 editors, publishers, professors and journalism students gathered at Kansas University for Kansas Editors Day, a significant jump from the roughly two dozen people who attended the event last year.
At its peak in the 1960s and ’70s, Editors Day brought a large contingent of the state’s professional and academic journalists together each fall to network, share ideas and enjoy a football game. KU and Kansas State University alternate playing host to Editors Day each year.
Former KU journalism dean Del Brinkman, who taught at Kansas State before coming to KU, said the event once was the highlight of the fall semester for the journalism schools.
“It was a big deal at both places, and the attraction was not football, because neither team was winning,” said Brinkman, who was dean from 1974 to 1986.
But in recent years, interest in the event had fallen considerably.
When Ann Brill, KU’s interim dean of journalism, took over the top job at the school this summer, she and journalism professor Susanne Shaw set out to rejuvenate the lackluster event.
Shaw contacted Paul Stevens, a former student who is an executive with The Associated Press, about getting Walter Mears, a Pulitzer Prize-winning AP reporter, to deliver the keynote address.
Mears agreed, and the journalism school launched a successful effort to get editors and alumni to attend.
