An Austin couple who met 59 years ago as staffers on The Daily Texan, student newspaper at The University of Texas at Austin, has established an annual cash award for present day staffers.
With their gift to The University, the couple established the Jerry and Becky Conn Daily Texan Scholarship Fund to be awarded annually in perpetuity. The generous gift will generate a $1,500 cash award for a deserving Texan staffer.
The award will be announced each fall at the Friends of the Texan annual event. The Friends of the Texan is a non-profit group of former staffers that supports the Texan, and ensures that this important student experience is available for generations to come.
The couple said their gift came from two separate intentions:
“We feel that The Daily Texan is an excellent way to combat a rising tide of ignorance about news, the news media and any confusion of good journalism with ‘fake news’. It provides great practice and learning experiences that include the highest standards of American journalism.
“For example, anyone who thinks there’s no such thing as objectivity, we would say, if any reporter tries to slip in his or her opinion into a Texan news story, they will simply wish they hadn’t!”
The couple said their second intention was to commemorate the Texan because that was where they met on a spring day in 1960, so the Texan is doubly meaningful to them.
Jerry was walking back to the Sigma Chi House after a wrestling class in Gregory Gym and dropped by the Texan office just to visit. Becky (Reynolds), an officer in student government, dropped in after a committee meeting discussing banning alcohol at parties. They got into a lively discussion of that issue as strangers. They were married a year-and-a-half later.
Becky was awarded a Jesse H. Jones Scholarship at UT. A native of Portland, Oregon, she graduated from high school in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Jerry, a native of Beaumont, worked during college summers on the Beaumont enterprise and the San Angelo Standard-Times. Upon graduation, he worked for The Associated Press during a session of the legislature before going into the Army.