While serving my past duties on the board of directors for the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, including time as the vice president in 2005, the range of inductees spanned far and near, all with shared talents and merits of our profession.
I often argued with my voting board member colleagues that it seemed, most often, it was journalists, both print and broadcast, from downstate who were most commonly recognized with accolades and induction.
In 2011, we inducted my own newsroom boss at that time, the late Bill Nangle, executive editor at The Times of Northwest Indiana.
This Saturday, another Northwest Indiana name with an ink bloodline will share this same top honor and Hoosier who’s who distinction.
The induction class of 2024 includes seven trailblazers, innovators and defenders of press freedom, all being honored during Saturday’s April 27 dinner ceremony for the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame at Woodland Country Club in Carmel. They join more than 200 members already inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame since its founding in 1966.
“The only tough part of being on the IJHF board is narrowing the field of nominees down to about a half-dozen inductees,” said Stephanie Salter, president of the board.
“This year was tougher than ever with a record number of worthy journalists presented for our consideration. The seven we selected truly represent the best of the best.”
Among this year’s inductees is our own Francisco Figueroa (1896-1951), the printer, publisher and editorial contributor to Indiana’s first Spanish language newspaper El Amigo del Hogar, which translates to “A Friend of the Home,” based in East Chicago. As an ink anchor in the Northwest Indiana steel-producing communities, the steel mills were a work draw for the Mexican migrant community to settle in our area after the turn of the century. It was Figueroa and his family operating their print shop, which later became the newsroom home to their newspaper documenting the experiences of the immigrant community.
After patriarch Figueroa’s death, his son Luis became the head printer with his wife Eve assisting with office operations. By the 1950s, the name of the newspaper became The Latin Times of East Chicago.
Eve is the older sister of my friend and food and entertainment columnist colleague Eloise Marie Valadez, who is my counterpart at The Times of Northwest Indiana. Eloise and her sister Eve, representing husband Luis, who won’t be making Saturday’s trip, will join Luis’ sister Irene Osorio at this weekend’s awards banquet.
Eloise told me The Latin Times, which was a bilingual weekly printing about 2,000 copies per week, ceased publication in the 1980s. She said while chatting in the past with East Chicago TV news broadcast claim-to-fame Phil Ponce, now 74, he told her began his “journalism career” in East Chicago as a boy delivering The Latin Times. A favorite longtime weekly feature of The Latin Times was a front-page gossip column written by an anonymous pen name known only as “Tillie.”
The other 2024 inductees at Saturday’s dinner include Bill Benner, sports writer and columnist for The Indianapolis Star; broadcaster Sandra Chapman of WISH-TV Indianapolis; NPR TV and radio critic Eric Deggans; Terre Haute Tribune-Star Editor Max Jones; journalist and documentarian Wallace Terry; and Spencer County Leader, Dale News and Ferdinand News publisher Kathy Tretter.
The IJHF board solicits nominations from the public annually through October. At the organization’s November meeting, the board selects the outstanding journalists for induction the following spring.
This will be the first year the hall is partnering with Butler University to promote and preserve the work of Indiana journalists, past and present.
“We already are seeing the benefits of this through our collaboration with students and others at Butler as we prepare for the induction ceremony,” Salter said.
“This represents a new chapter in our organization’s story.”
Philip Potempa is a journalist, published author and the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org.
