Halls of Fame

Wiley Price III – 2018

Wiley Price III was often the only press photographer to show up at crime scenes or news events, and the awards he received for that work attest to its value and quality. Long associated with the St. Louis American, Price also shot for the Suburban Journals, Associated Press and numerous publications as a free-lancer. His community involvement helped earn him recognition as one of the NAACP’s “100 Most Inspiring St. Louisans” in 2009, and he could often be found in local grade and high schools serving as a guest lecturer. The Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists honored him in 2018 as a living legend for his years of service to the local African-American Community.

Sarah Leen – 2015

Sarah Leen was appointed director of photography at National Geographic magazine in May 2013, becoming the first woman to hold that job in the National Geographic Society’s 125-year history. For 27 years prior, the St. Louis-area native worked as a freelance photographer for National Geographic magazine, and in 2004, she joined the magazine’s staff as a senior photo editor.

In 1979, as a student at Mizzou, Leen received the College Photographer of the Year award.

She went on to work as a staff photographer for the Topeka (Kansas) Capital-Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer. A book of her work, American Back Roads, was published by National Geographic in 2000.

Dwight Bitikofer – 2019

Dwight Bitikofer was the founder, with two other college students, of the Webster Times in 1978, beginning a company that would soon publish three weekly community newspapers. As the group’s publisher, Bitikofer did everything from proofreading to newspaper distribution, including writing a regular publisher’s column. Those articles won awards from the Missouri Press Association and the Independent Free Papers of America. He was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Kirkwood Chamber of Commerce and was named Webster Groves Citizen of the Year.

Margaret Wolf Freivogel – 2016

Margaret Wolf Freivogel wore many hats during her journalism career. At the Post-Dispatch, she was a reporter, Washington correspondent, assistant managing editor and assistant chief of the paper’s Washington Bureau. She left the Post in 2005 and in 2008 helped establish The St. Louis Beacon, one of the nation’s first digital non-profit newsrooms. And through a merger in 2013, Margie became editor of St. Louis Public Radio, from which she retired in 2016. Among her professional recognitions, she received the National Press Club Washington Correspondent’s Award, the Missouri School of Journalism Honor Medal and the American Bar Association Gavel Award.

Jeannette Cooperman – 2019

Jeannette Batz Cooperman’s byline has been seen in many publications over the span of her career. She spent ten years as an investigative reporter for The Riverfront Times and fifteen years at St. Louis Magazine, holds a doctorate in American studies, and has written five books. Her work has also appeared in national magazines, the Post-Dispatch, and Barnes Hospital and Saint Louis University publications, and she currently writes three pieces a week for Washington University’s journal of the essay, The Common Reader.

Cooperman’s efforts have been recognized with many awards, including the City & Regional Magazine Association’s national Writer of the Year award and, four times, the Great Plains Journalism Writer of the Year award.

Roy J. Harris – 2016

Roy J. Harris joined the Post-Dispatch in 1926 after a brief stint at the St. Louis Star, and during his 41 years at the Post, his work helped bring the paper four Pulitzer Prizes over a 15 year period. He personally shared one of those Pulitzers with a reporter with the Chicago Daily News. Their joint investigation exposed the fact that at least 51 newspaper employees around Illinois were on the state’s payroll during the gubernatorial term of Dwight Green. Other Pulitzers were won for stories about the Centralia mine disaster, St. Louis election fraud and smoke pollution in the City of St. Louis.