Print HOF

Dan Martin – 2019

Dan Martin was one of the small fraternity of artists responsible for the Weatherbird daily feature in the Post-Dispatch. He began that job in 1986. Dan’s additional duties included authoring the weekly “Postcards from Mound City” cartoon, and other illustration and editing assignments. A member of the National Cartoonists’ Society, Dan’s historic expertise is evident in the many speeches he gives, the books he has authored, and his work as a charter member of the board of directors of the St. Louis Media History Foundation.

Ben Thomas – 2019

Ben Thomas was the founder, editor and do-everything guy at the St. Louis Evening Whirl. He left his job as entertainment editor at the St. Louis Argus in 1937 to start his own weekly entertainment paper for the Black community, the Night Whirl. As promotion for that paper, he initiated the Colored Mayors’ Association, hosted beauty pageants and interviewed visiting celebrities. When he broke a local crime story that the town’s other papers wouldn’t print, he sold over 50,000 copies and immediately changed the name to the Evening Whirl, concentrating on creatively written, sensational crime stories.

Don Corrigan – 2019

Don Corrigan worked simultaneously as a full-time journalism professor at Webster University and editor for weekly papers at Webster-Kirkwood Times, Inc., a situation that gave his students the benefit of learning from a full-time working journalist. He reported from several foreign locations and as an editorial board member for the St. Louis Journalism Review. He was honored with the Gannett Foundation Award for environmental journalism and the College Media Advisers’ Lifetime Distinguished College Newspaper Adviser honor.

Arthur Donnelly – 2019

Arthur Donnelly, having worked as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and an ad salesman for the Globe-Democrat, was the co-founder of what would become known as the Suburban Journals newspaper group in St. Louis. It began with the purchase of the Cherokee News in 1933 and the Wellston Local in 1935. By the time the co-owners, Donnelly and Frank Bick, sold the chain in the mid-1980s there were 33 separate papers in Missouri and Illinois with a combined free circulation of over 800,000 households.

Clarissa Start – 2016

There were few women working in the newsroom of the Post-Dispatch when Clarissa Start started her career there in 1938. That career gave her the opportunity to interview celebrities for the paper’s feature-laden Everyday Magazine section. She began writing her column, “The Little Woman,” in 1955, sharing with her large female audience her own perspective on family life. When she retired from the paper in 1972, that column ended, but her Post-Dispatch writing career continued with “The Happy Gardener” until she was 85, for a total of 64 years in the paper. During her long career she also found time to write ten books.

Dave Dorr – 2017

Dave Dorr became a familiar face at the Olympics, covering them nine times during his career with the Post-Dispatch. He joined the paper in 1966 and stayed for 35 years, writing about sports, international politics and filling the Everyday Magazine with features. It was sports where he excelled. Dorr covered the Masters and U.S. Open, and he was also a college basketball correspondent for Sports Illustrated and a columnist for The Sporting News. His work was nominated for a Pulitzer three times, he was voted Missouri Sportswriter of the year three consecutive years