RTDNA announces Gary L. Hanson International Reporting Fellowship

RTDNA is proud to announce the formation of the Gary L. Hanson International Reporting Fellowship, which will be awarded annually starting in 2025. 

The Gary L. Hanson International Reporting Fellowship will provide a stipend of up to $2,500 to attend the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy — or another international journalism event if selected by the recipient, or organization — for an exploratory look at international journalism. The fellowship is open to undergraduate and graduate students.

The fellowship is established in honor of Gary Hanson, a former RTDNA chair who spent his life leading newsrooms and teaching the next generation of journalists.

Gary knew he was headed for a career in TV news ever since he was a kid in Carrington, North Dakota, with a toy TV studio made out of cardboard boxes in his family’s basement playroom.

He overcame a childhood stutter to become a DJ at his hometown radio station, KDAK, between years of college at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. There, he announced and trained announcers at KFJM, the college’s NPR affiliate, and swept floors at the local TV station. That is, until the night when the news feed from the parent station failed and he went on the air to read wire copy salvaged from under the coffee grounds in WDAZ’s trash can.

After college, he moved to Mitchell, South Dakota, to work at KORN radio but quit that job four days later to join the news team at KXON-TV, located in a cornfield just outside town.

From there, he went to WKBN in Youngstown, Ohio, as executive producer and then news director. The management of the family-owned station supported his participation in (then) RTNDA as he moved from regional director through the leadership chairs to chairman in the early 1990s.

When the station was sold in the late 90s, he went back to school at Kent State University for his M.A. and then joined the journalism school faculty there. He taught reporting and producing and advised the student TV station. He earned tenure and full professor status and won the university’s prestigious Distinguished Teaching Award.

In spite of cancer treatments that started in 2010, he and a print journalism faculty colleague developed the capstone of his teaching career, a class called International Storytelling. In this course, the two professors took a group of students majoring in broadcast and print news, photojournalism, video production and public relations to another country. They partnered with a university in each location so that students and faculty from each institution could work together to develop, report, and produce news stories. Over the course of six years, the class traveled to China, India, Brazil, Estonia, South Korea and Cyprus. While the international student partners observed American journalism in action, the Kent State students were exposed to new cultures and made new friends. Many of them called the course a life-changing experience.

Gary often expressed regret that he didn’t start traveling abroad until later in life and encouraged his students to continue exploring the world. That’s why a fellowship in International Storytelling is such an appropriate legacy to establish in his name.