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| Journalism: Interscholastic League Press Conference |
ILPC History
In 1925, The University of Texas Department of Journalism hosted a small group of high school students and advisers for the first Interscholastic League Press Conference convention. The convention had its beginning with Paul J. Thompson, a UT journalism professor who believed that wherever journalism was taught, it should be taught well.
To that end, he was instrumental in setting up summer courses for high school journalism teachers. He originated the idea of spring meetings for high school journalism students. The first two-day conference was conducted May 8-9, 1925, and, according to an article in the Interscholastic Leaguer, 30 delegates attended.
The second conference was held in the spring of 1928. This time lapse occurred because Governor Miriam Ferguson had vetoed the appropriation for the UT Department of Journalism in 1926 and the department was not reinstated until the fall of 1927.
In 1927, DeWitt Reddick, then a journalism graduate student, assumed responsibility of the ILPC program. Under his guidance, ILPC grew into the state's largest high school press association.
After his retirement for health reasons in 1978, Bobby Hawthorne took over the organization and made it not only the largest, but a leader of scholastic journalism nationwide. With these leaders, the organization and convention have become one of the nation's largest and most trusted. Hawthorne gave up his directorship of ILPC in the summer of 1999 and Randy Vonderheid, a former Texas journalism teacher, took over as director of the organization.
ILPC is now the nation's largest state high school press association, with a combined membership of more than 600 newspapers and yearbooks. Affiliated with the University Interscholastic League, ILPC provides critical rating services, sponsors workshops and seminars, conducts individual awards competitions, and recognizes advisers for outstanding career achievements. In addition, ILPC's newsletter, The Reporter, provides information on current events and offers a forum for the discussion of issues of concern to journalism educators.
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- ILPC History