Chairman’s Citation Winner Has Died

Steve Buttry, winner of the National Press Foundation’s 2016 Chairman’s Citation, died Sunday after a lengthy struggle with cancer.

Buttry was honored at NPF’s annual journalism awards dinner on Feb. 16, and died three days later. Buttry, a journalist to the end, wrote his own obituary. Read it here.

Buttry was too ill to attend the NPF dinner to receive his award. His three sons, Mike, Tom and Joe, accepted the honor for their father with a beautiful tribute to him as journalist, husband and father. Watch the video here.

steve-buttery-iconIntroducing the award, NPF chairman Kevin M. Goldberg said, “Steve Buttry embodies NPF’s mission of ‘making good journalists better.’ Throughout his long and distinguished career, he has continually asked journalists to rethink how they do their jobs. In particular, his challenge to ‘listen more, talk less’ has taken on new importance as we emerge from the 2016 elections and re-evaluate what journalism is and what it must become.”

At the time of his death, Buttry was director of Student Media at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.

Previously, he was digital transformation editor at Digital First Media, director of community engagement at TBD.com and director of tailored programs at the American Press Institute. He has been an editor, reporter and writing coach at the Omaha World-Herald, Des Moines Register, Minot Daily News, Kansas City Star and Times and the Evening Sentinel in Shenandoah, Iowa.

Buttry was recently honored with the creation of the Stephen Buttry Scholarship at the Manship School. Donations to the scholarship fund can be made here.

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