SPJ honors exceptional career 

and future journalist at lunch

It was a warm, supportive crowd that gathered May 20 at the City Club to honor this year's Distinguished Service Award recipient, Debora Lee, recently retired from Newschannel 5 and now teaching at Kent State University, and Porter Scholarship winner Samantha Harris, a graduating senior at Brunswick High School who is headed to Ohio State University in the fall.  

Lee's broadcasting career began in radio in the late '70s in West Virginia. She moved to television and WTOV in Steubenville in 1984, where she was a reporter, anchor, producer and assistant news director.  

During her time at NewsChannel 5, Lee focused on education and covered many stories on the topic, but also served as a general assignment reporter. "To be general assignment means you have to be ready for whatever is thrown your way," Bibb noted.   

When Lee spoke, she paid special attention to Samantha Harris, the young scholarship winner who is just starting out to follow in her footsteps.

"Nobody expected me to last a year, let alone 26 years," Lee said, remembering her early days at WEWS-TV. Her first stories were torn apart and rewritten by the executive producer, and she felt she would never master what was wanted in her first job in a major television market. But she kept at it "and finally, the light bulb went off. I got it," she said.      

"Remember this Samantha. Sometimes you're just going to have to keep at it."   

Harris, who was introduced by Paula Slimak, will receive $1,000 a year for four years, provided she keeps up her grades at Ohio State, from the Philip W. Porter Scholarship, named for a longtime editor of The Plain Dealer who was also a founding member of the Cleveland SPJ chapter.   

"Sam told our committee how she truly wants to make a difference through her work... by 'giving someone a voice,'" said Slimak, who was on the committee that interviewed the scholarship finalists. "The voiceless she has embraced in her school included young men and women in the Gay Straight Alliance. She also gave voice to her own cousin, during a time  when she was still heartbroken after learning of her cousin's suicide," Slimak continued. 

"She's done stories to give her classmates reason to care about Veterans' Day, to explore teen dating violence and awareness and, as a staffer, the year before being named editor-in-chief of Brecksville's Blue Devils' Devilier, Sam candidly reported about her own health challenge and explained how support of faculty and classmates made them become another family in her life. That obviously helps drive her."

Photo by Carrie Buchanan    Samantha Harris

When Harris got up to speak, she told the group, "The reason I want to go into journalism .... If you look in my resume you can find a love of

She plans to double-major in journalism and international relations with a minor in Arabic, she said, and as part of the international scholars program, she will be able to travel.  

"I'm actually going to India in a year, which I'm very excited about," Harris said.