The four Journalists-in-Residence for Spring 2005 were Tom DeFrank, Kelly Brown, Loren Steffy and Michael Landauer.

Thomas DeFrank.  He is a veteran political journalist and author. As Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News, he directs coverage of the capital for the country’s third-largest metropolitan daily newspaper and is considered one of Washington’s most respected President-watchers. He was Newsweek’s senior White House correspondent until 1995.  DeFrank, second in length of tenure only to Helen Thomas, has covered the White House since 1970.  He also is former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

The 2004 Presidential campaign is the tenth he has covered in 35 years as a Washington reporter.  He has also covered the resignation of one President, the impeachment of a second, and was an eyewitness to two assassination attempts against a third.  DeFrank also has covered 15 Soviet-American summits beginning with the historic 1975 Ford-Brezhnev meeting at Vladivostok.  He reported extensively on the Persian Gulf war and traveled to Saudi Arabia with President George H. W. Bush in November 1990 and then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General Colin Powell in December 1990. In April 1997 he accompanied Vice President Gore on his trip to China.  In 1973 DeFrank covered the return of American POWs from Vietnam at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.  DeFrank’s work has earned him several prestigious reporting awards including one from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting from the 1987 Reagan-Gorbachev summit.

His reporting has been praised as “riveting.” ABC News calls him “excellent, well-connected and influential” and “legendary.”  The American Journalism Review has rated him “one of the unsung stars of Washington journalism.”  The New York Times ranked him as one of the country’s best political ghostwriters. And former President Gerald R. Ford calls him “one of the finest journalists I have ever known. Everyone I know feels the same way: you are fair, trustworthy and professional.”

DeFrank co-authored Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms, the best-selling memoirs of controversial Republican political consultant Ed Rollins published in August 1996. He also co-authored The Politics of Diplomacy, the memoirs of former Secretary of State James Baker III, and Quest for the Presidency 1992, a critically acclaimed, behind-the-scenes look at the Clinton-Bush election.

In 2006, DeFrank won the nineteenth annual Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. The $5,000 award recognizes journalists whose high standards for accuracy and substance help foster a better public understanding of the Presidency. Vice President Cheney, former President Ford’s Chief of Staff, is scheduled to present the award at a National Press Club luncheon on June 19th, 2006.

He was selected as the recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2005 for the diligence of his reporting, his insight into significant changes emerging in the first year of President George Bush’s second term, and the clarity and brevity of his writing.  Many White House correspondents performed well and wrote at length during the year; none matched DeFrank in compressing information, analysis, and lively writing into so little space.  His coverage of the White House demonstrated a particularly keen perception of relationships among principals and how these relationships influenced official policy.  His articles were consistently accurate, balanced in judgment, and usually ahead of his competitors.  Considered as a whole, DeFrank’s work exemplified the excellence in journalism that brings greater public understanding of the modern American Presidency.

The judges for this year's contest were: Chair, James M. Cannon, former journalist and political advisor; Candice Nelson, associate professor of Government and Director of American University's Campaign Management Institute; Mark Rozell, professor of Public Policy at George Mason University; Hal Bruno, retired journalist and political director for ABC News; and Jack Nelson, former Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau and Pulitzer Prize-winner.

The Gerald R. Ford Foundation sponsors the Presidency Prize.  The Foundation is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation whose programs are supported entirely by contributions and bequests in an effort to honor President Ford's sustained commitment to public service.

DeFrank edited the campus newspaper and graduated with high honors from Texas A&M in 1967. He also has a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota.

Class Handouts from Tom DeFrank

Kelly Brown.  She is managing editor of The Bryan-College Station Eagle.  For more than three years, she has directed day-to-day and long-term news coverage for the paper. In 1989, Brown graduated with a journalism degree from Texas A&M.  She worked for two years at The Battalion, the university’s student newspaper. After graduation, Brown spent two years reporting for Harte-Hanks Community Newspapers in Dallas, then joined The Eagle in 1991 as a police and general assignments reporter. The following year Brown was promoted to assistant city editor and was city editor when she left the paper in 1994. During a two-year absence from the newsroom, Brown worked as a private investigator and freelance writer. She returned to The Eagle in June 1996 as the senior reporter covering the courthouse and was promoted four years later to managing editor.  Brown has won numerous reporting and writing awards including four Headliners from the Austin Press Club. She also taught a reporting class at Texas A&M.

Class Handouts from Kelly Brown

Loren Steffy. Loren Steffy is the business columnist for the Houston Chronicle. Before joining the paper in April, he worked for Bloomberg News in Dallas for 12 years, most recently as Texas bureau chief and senior writer for Bloomberg Markets magazine. Steffy covered a variety of business topics in Texas and across the country, including the collapse of Enron. Before joining Bloomberg, Steffy worked at the Dallas Times Herald, the Dallas Business Journal and the Arlington Daily News.

Steffy is an eight-time recipient of the Dallas Press Club’s Katie Award for business reporting and a two-time winner of the Dallas Bar Association’s Stephen H. Philbin Award for Excellence in Legal Reporting. He also was a winner of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Best in Business Award in 1997, and was a 2002 finalist for a Gerald R. Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism sponsored by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA.

Steffy has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M University. He is the past president of the Former Journalism Students Association.

Steffy’s column in the Chronicle appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Check out his blog for his latest projects, including coverage of the Enron trial (Spring/Summer 2006.)

Class Handouts from Loren Steffy

Michael Landauer.  Landauer is Assistant Editorial Page Editor for Suburbs for The Dallas Morning News.  He graduated with a journalism degree from Texas A&M in 1997. During his senior year, he was editor of the school’s newspaper—The Battalion—when it was named one of the nation’s top ten college newspapers. Landauer worked as a copy editor and opinion editor for the Arlington Morning News before developing suburban editorial pages for The Dallas Morning News in Collin County.

Class Handouts from Michael Landauer