1972 Press Club of Dallas "Katie Award" Best Spot Newspaper Coverage Sam Kinch J

Description: 1972 Press Club of Dallas "Katie Award" Best Spot Newspaper Coverage Sam Kinch
Jr Dallas Morning News Modernist Sculpture 15" tall and very heavy, solid bronze
on a wood base.

Sam Kinch Jr., was the founding editor of Texas Weekly and a former political
and government correspondent for The Dallas Morning News.

Kinch started Texas Weekly in 1984 with two friends, George Phenix and John
Rogers. He sold his share in 1998 (the political newsletter is now part of The
Texas Tribune) and retired to write, travel and enjoy his family.

He was a terrific reporter and mentor to other journalists, irreverent, smart as
hell, a great lover of dirty jokes, full of history, an incurable reader, a
Presbyterian elder and a surprisingly soft touch for people who needed some
help.

He wrote books, including Texas Under a Cloud, with Ben Proctor, about the
Sharpstown stock scandal that rocked the Capitol and resulted in the biggest
turnover in legislators in modern history, and Too Much is Not Enough, with Anne
Marie Kilday, a book on campaign finance in Texas.

Kinch was a University of Texas grad, with bachelor's and master's degrees in
journalism, a former editor of The Daily Texan.

The Press Club of Dallas originated in the late 1940s, when
employees of the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas TimesHerald gathered to
socialize after work. The organization was
formally founded in 1948 and chartered by the State of Texas in
1951. Its members were some of the first responders on the scene
when President Kennedy was assassinated, and the new reporting
standards established nationwide afterward bolstered the club’s
appeal to professionals. The Press Club of Dallas moved locations
frequently over the years, residing most recently at the Women’s
Museum in Fair Park. The organization currently maintains a board
of directors but has no physical location.1
The organization’s most notable activities are its annual
Gridiron show, Katie Awards, and roasts. The Gridiron show
began in 1951 and was modelled on the national one staged in
Washington, D.C. Originally consisting of “biting satire,” the
performance shifted towards a Broadway-esque style during the
late 1970s, but continued to lampoon events in Dallas. The
Griddle, a satirical newspaper, was produced and sold at the shows
to generate additional revenue. The Katie Awards ceremony began
in 1958. It honored “excellence in journalism” and attracted large
numbers of members of the press due to the prestige associated
with winning one. The Press Club of Dallas also annually roasted
prominent local citizens. These events serve as fundraisers for
journalism scholarships offered by the organization.2