JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - The Missouri Press Association is adding three journalism leaders to its Hall of Fame.
The inductees are Kia Breaux, Midwest regional director for The Associated Press; the late Laura Hockaday, longtime society editor for The Kansas City Star; and Dane Vernon, former publisher of Vernon Publishing and former MPA President.
Inductees’ plaques will join the permanent display of inductees in the MPA office in Columbia and in the student lounge in Lee Hills Hall at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Breaux worked in Washington, D.C., for Bridge News and Knight-Ridder Financial News before joining AP in 1997 in the Kansas City bureau. She was promoted to correspondent in the AP’s Roanoke, Virginia, bureau and later was named news editor for Nebraska. She returned to Kansas City in 2005, where she worked her way from assistant bureau chief to bureau chief for Missouri and Kansas. In her current regional director role, she’s responsible for business development and managing strategic partnerships.
Hockaday began at The Star in 1962 as a “Women’s News” section writer and then became travel editor. For the last 18 years of her career, she sought to make the society pages more progressive and inclusive as the section’s editor. She died in 2017 at the age of 79.
Vernon worked in his youth at the family’s newspaper, The Advertiser in Eldon, and joined Vernon Publishing full time in 1979. He later moved to Versailles to oversee the Leader-Statesman and the Morgan County Press in neighboring Stover. Vernon took on the Tipton Times when the family’s publishing company bought it in 1983 and began overseeing the entire company’s operations in 1992 when his father semi-retired.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.