The Chicago Headline Club’s annual Lifetime Achievement Award honors journalists who made extraordinary contributions to the community and profession of journalism throughout their career.
Now Accepting Nominations for 2022
To nominate a journalist known for their work in the Chicago area, fill out this form. Nominations must be submitted by March 14, 2023.
2021 Honorees: Bill Cameron and Dahleen Glanton
“Dean of the City Hall Pressroom” Bill Cameron became WMAQ’s permanent City Hall beat reporter in 1970, where during the next 51 years he covered nine Chicago mayors, nine Illinois governors, and ten U.S. presidents. During that same time, he saw more than 100 high-ranking city, county, and state officials imprisoned for crimes while in office.
A lifetime student of history, Cameron preserved audio of these events and his archive of thousands of sound bites from Chicago’s major events during the last half-century formed the basis for six albums and CDs he produced.
“It’s the best show in town,” he would tell anyone who asked why he stayed on the beat. When WMAQ went sports/talk in 2000, Cameron migrated to WLS Radio.
Read more about why Cameron was selected
Dahleen Glanton was born in a Georgia mill town where, as she has written, “race was at the center of just about everything.” After coming to Chicago in 1989 to join the Tribune from the Los Angeles Times, she trained her keen eye and powerful writing on how “race drives everything from politics to economics to the violence that consumes so many African-American neighborhoods, including my adopted hometown.”
She held several positions at the Tribune, ranging from associate metro editor to bureau chief in Atlanta, and covered some of the biggest stories of recent decades, including Hurricane Katrina, President Barack Obama’s 2008 election, and military families during the Iraq War.
As a columnist, she addressed a variety of subjects but made a specialty of encouraging dialogue on race, poverty and violence. She received numerous media awards, including from the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of News Editors, which gave her the Mike Royko Award for Commentary/Column Writing in 2018.
Read more about why Glanton was selected
About the Award
Each year, the Chicago Headline Club’s Lifetime Awards committee seeks nominations of journalists known primarily for their work in the Chicago area or Chicago-based media across print, broadcast, radio or digital media.
Nominees are then evaluated based on their body of work, service to the community and impact on the profession of journalism. The Headline Club board then votes to approve each year’s honorees.