College of Media | Journalism | Alumni Notes

Amanda Vinicky '03 JOURN, Illinois Public Radio statehouse reporter, took third place for Radio Beat Reporting in the National Capitolbeat Awards Competition.  Capitolbeat is the association of journalists who cover state capitols for radio stations, online news sites, TV stations, magazines, and newspapers.  Amanda's reports are heard regularly on WILL Radio, and she is a regular panel member on State Week in Review aired Saturdays at 11 a.m. on AM 580 and the WILL Web site.

Amy Rodenburg Maillet '03 JOURN, with husband Jeff, welcomed a son, Matthew Laurence Maillet, on June 1, 2010, in Milwaukee, Wis. Jeff and Amy both work at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as an assistant sports editor and copy editor respectively.

Beth Jones '07 JOURN is headed to Green Bay—WLUK TV (Fox). Most previously, she was a reporter WLUC in Marquette, Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, for about two years. Marquette is the 180th biggest TV market. Green Bay is the 80th size market. A BIG JUMP!

Roger Ebert '64 JOURN talks about his UI classmate Bill Nack '64 JOURN, in a new blogpost, "The storyteller and the stallion."

"Bill Nack is a born story-teller. The author of the biography Secretariat has enveloped me time and again in the fascination of his tales. That process began nearly 50 years ago at the University of Illinois, when we were both working on The Daily Illini. I was the editor, he was the sports editor, and then the following year he was the editor. He was also a natural writer -- and, perhaps more significantly, a natural reader. His taste was persuasive."

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Dick Slottow '48 JOURN has published a new book on covering his two years on the front lines of the infantry during World War II. This book took slightly more than 45 years write. I have been meaning to do this for a long time but finally got around to it. My memory turned out to be far better than I had imagined and the photos were still around. Pics were taken with a Leica 35mm camera found somewhere in Germany in 1944. Wish I still had the camera!  I had notes around for years and entered them in the first computer I owned in whatever year it was that I learned how to work it.