NIU student paper inducts 7 into Hall of Fame

DeKalb -The Northern Star Hall of Fame honored seven new members of at a banquet and induction ceremony Saturday, Feb. 22.

The four-year-old hall of fame honors former students, advisers and friends of the Northern Star, the daily student newspaper of Northern Illinois University.

This year's inductees were:

• Ted Bacino, Palm Springs, Calif. - Bacino was editor in chief in 1954-55 and the man largely responsible for the newspaper's name change from the Northern Illinois to the Northern Star. A longtime leader in Rockford's arts community, he is now retired and works as a free-lance writer.
• Rick Cerrone, Putnam Valley, N.Y. - Cerrone, Northern Star sports writer and sports editor from 1972-76, is director of media relations for the New York Yankees.
• John Kringas, Lockport, Ill. - Kringas, Northern Star photographer from 1984-90, now works as a photographer for the Chicago Tribune. During his time on campus, Kringas won numerous awards including a 1989 Hearst Journalism Award for photography. He also shared a Pulitzer Prize with the entire Tribune staff in 2001 for the "Gateway to Gridlock" project.
• Kathy Orr McDonald, Northern Star editor in 1982-83 and an award-winning business reporter for the Daily Southtown and several other newspapers. She died in 1997. A Northern Star scholarship, organized by her Northern Star contemporaries, bears her name.
• Michael O'Connor, Montgomery, Ala. - Northern Star editor in 1969, O'Connor went on to a successful career at newspapers across the country working on the production side of the business.
• Rick Ridnour, Sycamore, Ill. - An NIU professor of marketing, Ridnour is a longtime mentor and enthusiastic supporter of many of the Northern Star's advertising-sales students.
• Cary Spivak, Waukesha, Wis. - While a Northern Star reporter in 1977, Spivak's reporting exposed a cover-up of a traffic accident involving the NIU president, and resulted in the president's resignation. Today he works as an investigative columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The 2003 class brings the total number of Hall of Fame inductees to 32.

A new honor this year, the Outstanding Young Alumni Award, went to Jaime Jordan of Fort Worth, Texas. Jordan, a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, was the Northern Star's first African-American editor in chief, in 1996 and 1997.
Also, Steve Woodruff of Hinsdale, Ill., was awarded the annual Bridge Builder Award for service to current Northern Star students and advisers. Woodruff, who graduated in 2001, has assisted the paper's information technology staff in writing software and maintaining several computer networks.

Extended biographies of this year's and past honorees may be found at http://www.northernstar.info/alumni.

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