2005 News: Journalist/Educator Shepard Gets Distinguished Achievement

COLUMBIA, MO -- Shepard is the founding dean of the new graduate school of journalism at City University of New York. However, he is best known for his two decades as editor-in-chief at BusinessWeek magazine.

Established in 1993, SABEW’s Distinguished Achievement Award annually singles out individuals who made a significant impact on the field of business journalism and who have influenced others in the profession.

"Shepard's transformation of BusinessWeek is legendary. Combined with his past and current work in academia, we did not have a hard time selecting someone who embodies the mission of SABEW," said Chicago Tribune business columnist Bill Barnhart, a former SABEW president who chaired the selection committee.

During Shepard’s days at BusinessWeek, the magazine won four National Magazine Awards, 11 Overseas Press Club Awards and four Loeb Awards, and expanded its circulation by 40 percent.
Another one of Shepard’s major contributions to business journalism was helping to establish the Knight-Bagehot Fellowships in Economic and Business Journalism, the respected educational program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Shepard’s journalistic career began 1963 as a trainee at McGraw-Hill, BusinessWeek’s parent. He joined the magazine in 1966, and worked there for a decade. From 1971 to 1976, he was an adjunct professor at Columbia University where he was also the first director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship.

In 1976, Shepard left BusinessWeek in 1976 for Newsweek. In 1981, he became editor of Saturday Review. He returned to BusinessWeek as executive editor in 1982 and became editor-in-chief in 1984.
Past recipients of SABEW's Distinguished Achievement Award include: the late Hobart Rowan of the Washington Post; Myron Kandel of Cable News Network; the late Larry Birger of the Miami Herald; Chris Welles of BusinessWeek; Cheryl Hall of the Dallas Morning News; Marshall Loeb with CBSMarketWatch.com; John Cuniff of the Associated Press; Chet Currier of Bloomberg News; Ernest Holsendolph of Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Allan Sloan of Newsweek; Byron "Barney" Calame of The Wall Street Journal; Randy Smith of The Kansas City Star; James K. "Jimmy" Gentry of the University of Kansas; and Linda O'Bryon of Nightly Business Report.

Shepard’s award will be honored at SABEW’s 42nd Annual Conference in Seattle on May 1-3. The conference features speeches from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

More information about SABEW, its Distinguished Achievement Award and its Seattle Conference can be found at the society’s Web site at http://www.sabew.org.

SABEW, with 3,300 members, is headquartered at the Missouri School of Journalism. The society was formed in 1964 to promote superior coverage of business and economic events.

SABEW will hold a second educational event this year: Its annual reporting workshops, in St. Louis on October 10-11.