R.B. Brenner, metropolitan editor of the Washington Post, is the recipient of the 2009 DeWitt Carter Reddick Award, recognizing outstanding people in the field of communication. It is one of the highest honors given by The University of Texas at Austin College of Communication.
He will accept the award during the College of Communication Honors Day Convocation, for which he is the keynote speaker, at 10:30 a.m., April 5, at the ATandT Executive Education and Conference Center. The title of his speech is “Optimism About Journalism’s Future: A Revolutionary Act.”
At the Washington Post, Brenner is a leader of the metropolitan news staff, which covers Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. He was one of the supervising editors responsible for coverage of the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, which was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. He is a visiting lecturer–teaching a graduate course in public affairs reporting and writing–in the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin while on leave from the Post.
Previously, he was a senior editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune and city editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Brenner began his reporting career at the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina, writing stories about public schools and higher education. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and was an Ethics Fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Last year, he was technical adviser for “State of Play,” a film starring Academy Award winners Russell Crowe and Helen Mirren, to be released later this month.
DeWitt Carter Reddick was the first dean of the College of Communication. He also was director of the School of Journalism from 1959 to 1965, teaching thousands of journalism students, including Walter Cronkite, Lady Bird Johnson, Ben Sargent and Karen Elliott House, from 1927 until his retirement in 1975.
Established in 1974, the DeWitt Carter Reddick Award recognizes excellence in the field of communication. Past Reddick Award recipients include Walter Cronkite, Molly Ivins, Nicholas Lemann, Bill Moyers, William S. Paley, William J. Raspberry, Helen Thomas, Ted Turner and Bill Wittliff, among others.
