API Dedications During Its 50th Anniversary p.11

By: Debra Gersh Hernandez

IN ADDITION TO a gala dinner, the American Press Institute dedicated several areas of its Reston, Va., headquarters during its 50th anniversary celebration.
Preceding the dinner, API dedicated the Charles E. Scripps Conference Room in recognition of a $400,000 Scripps Howard Foundation grant to the API's $10 million endowment campaign.
Another conference room was dedicated in the name of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which gave a $1.5 million grant to the API endowment campaign.
Also unveiled was a "Hall of Memories" featuring photographs and documents chronicling the history of API. The exhibit was funded by the Dallas Morning News, whose parent company, A.H. Belo, contributed $150,000 to API.
During the celebration dinner, API announced that the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation awarded it $729,000 to fund a three-year project to integrate "new media" into API seminars.
And, lest the anniversary celebration stray from more traditional roots, newspaper editors and publishers attending the annual J. Montgomery Curtis Seminar at API earlier in the day ? with the prodding of API president and executive director William L. Winter ? sang a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday," and then did the wave twice around the conference table.