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Tom Curley, president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press, received the William Allen White Foundation’s national citation during a public ceremony at 1:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 6, 2009, in Woodruff Auditorium of the Kansas Union.
Curley is the 12th person to head The Associated Press since its founding in 1846. Many of the AP bureau chiefs, reporters and photographers he leads also are KU School of Journalism alumni, including Tom Slaughter, New York, vice president; Paul Stevens, Kansas City, regional vice president; Sally Streff Buzbee, Cairo bureau chief; Traci Carl, Mexico City bureau chief; Bill Foreman, Guangzhou Shi, South China bureau chief; Hal Ritter, business editor, New York; Julie Jacobson, New York photographer; Deb Riechmann, White House reporter, Washington; John Hanna, Topeka correspondent; and John Milburn, Topeka newsman.
“The School of Journalism and the Associated Press have a long and impressive history,” Journalism Dean Ann Brill said. “Our alumni have served as reporters, bureau chiefs and executives within this global media organization. We are honored to have Tom Curley join the ranks of those honored with this national citation.”
As part of Curley’s strategy for the digital age, he has charted an international plan to drive content and new business. A first milestone was the creation of a multimedia database that allows all AP content to be searched by AP journalists and customers. AP has added content for finance, online video and entertainment audiences.
He also has established programs to encourage and celebrate exceptional journalism. The AP was the first western news agency to open a bureau in Pyongang, North Korea, and it has added staff in Latin America, Asia and the Mideast, including Iraq, where AP has more than a hundred journalists. Among recognition during his tenure are the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, awarded to AP for its work in Iraq, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, awarded to AP for a West Bank photo.
“Tom Curley represents big and appropriate repositioning at the Associated Press, which, like all of journalism, must redefine itself in this time of change,” Tom Eblen, chairman of the William Allen White Foundation, said.
In October 2007, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press presented Curley with a First Amendment Award. RCFP said he was selected because of his work encouraging media organizations to fight for the public’s right to know what’s going on in government. In March 2008, he received the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation’s First Amendment Leadership Award for his role in pushing for more openness in government and for emphasizing reporting on First Amendment issues.
Before joining the Associated Press, Curley was president and publisher of USA Today. From 1998 he was also senior vice president of the newspaper’s owner, Gannett Co., Inc., publisher of 100 daily newspapers in the United States. Under Curley’s leadership, USA Today circulation grew to more than 2.3 million copies a day.
Curley was the original news staffer on the project that led to the creation of USA Today. He was assigned in 1979 by then-Gannett Chairman Al Neuharth to study the feasibility of a national newspaper. He later worked in every department of the newspaper. In 1986, he became the newspaper’s sixth president and in 1991, added the title of publisher.
Curley began his journalism career at the age of 15, covering high school basketball for his hometown Easton (Pa.) Express. He continued working for newspapers during college, and joined Gannett’s Rochester (N.Y.) Times-Union in 1972 as night city/suburban editor. He became director of information for Gannett in 1976 and began coordinating Gannett’s newspaper research projects, which produced more than 50,000 interviews on media use. He became editor of Gannett’s Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin in 1982 and publisher of The Courier-News at Bridgewater, N.J., in 1983 before returning to USA Today in 1985.
Curley holds a political science degree from Philadelphia’s La Salle University and a master’s degree in business administration from Rochester Institute of Technology.
The White Foundation trustees chose Curley to receive the citation, presented annually since 1950. KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications is named in White’s honor. White (1868-1944) was a nationally influential Kansas editor and publisher. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 and posthumously in 1947.
Other notable recipients of the William Allen White Citation have included James Reston, 1950; Walter Cronkite, 1969; Arthur O. Sulzberger, 1974; James J. Kilpatrick, 1979; Helen Thomas, 1986; Charles Kuralt, 1989; Bernard Shaw, 1994; Bob Woodward, 2000; Molly Ivins, 2001; Cokie Roberts, 2002; Gerald F. Seib, 2005; and Gordon Parks, 2006. A full listing of past recipients is available here.
For more information, contact Jennifer Kinnard, Communications Coordinator for the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, at (785) 864-7644 or jkinnard@ku.edu.
*Biography information and photo courtesy of the Associated Press.
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