AKRON, Ohio-Debra Adams Simmons, the first Black female editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper, was among 22 Akron and Cleveland area journalists recognized at a Women in Journalism Luncheon sponsored by the Akron Press Club and the League of Women Voters Akron Area on Sat. that featured nationally known journalist Connie Schultz as the keynote speaker with her doting husband, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown(D-OH), in attendance. (Editor's note: Read the names of the other 21 recipients of recognition for journalistic excellence at the end of this article).
Held at the Fairlawn Country Club in Akron, a city some 35 miles south of Cleveland, Oh., the event was billed as a celebration of womanhood and a reminder of the force that women journalists bring to the literary and media forums.
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Connie Schultz
"I dare you talk about their (women's) sex lives and call her slut," said Schultz of Limbaugh.
She said that women in journalism have always had to be assertive to be successful and that seasoned and talented female journalists who challenge the status quo are sometimes targeted with comments about "how you look, weigh and how old you are."
Schultz said that though she initially met Brown when she was 25 in a casual capacity she did not marry him until years later, after she had been married, divorced and reared two children as a single parent. She said that the senator's mother, Emily Campbell Brown, who lived to be 88 but is now deceased, was a drawing point and that watching President Barack Obama make history was one of her last gestures before her death.
"She got to watch Obama 's swearing in from her hospital bed," said Schultz.
The seasoned Plain Dealer journalist, who is also now an independent freelance columnist, said that meeting Pulitzer prize winning author Toni Morrison is one of her most memorable moments and that she takes pride in working at the Plain Dealer.
In addition to Adams Simmons, a former editor of the Akron Beacon Journal who became editor of the Plain Dealer in 2010, the League of Women Voters of the Akron Area, which is led by Diana Kingsbury, recognized women journalists from the Akron and Cleveland area in both news and radio.
They are Lisa Abraham, Yvonne Bruce, Kerry Clawson, Elissa Murray, Laura Ofibike, Susan Price, Lynn Sherwin and Monica Thomas of the Akron Beacon Journal, Plain Dealer reporters Janet Cho, Ellen Jane Kleinerman, Debbie VanTassel and Mary Vanac, and Cleveland Urban News.Com publisher and editor Kathy Wray Coleman, a former freelance journalist for the Cleveland Call and Post Newspaper.
Also recognized were Akron Life Magazine Reporters Abby Cymerman, Mimi Vanderhaven, Lynn Margalit, Sue Schultz and Jane Snow, and Weside Leader Reporter Kathleen Folkerth.
Other recipients highlighted for outstanding journalism were Amanni Abraham and Lindsay McCoy of WAKR 1590 AM in Akron and WR 45/49 Reporter Jody Kostand Miller.
Reach Kathy Wray Coleman by email at kathy@kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, and by telephone at 216-932-3114.