Joseph M. Quinn Award for Lifetime Achievement

The following group of journalists has received the Los Angeles Press Club’s highest honor. The Joseph M. Quinn Memorial Award for Journalistic Achievement and Distinction is the highest honor bestowed by the Los Angeles Press Club.

Winners join a select group of distinguished journalists, including a number of Pulitzer Prize and Peabody Award winners.

The award was named in honor of Joe Quinn, who died in 1977. Joe was a veteran reporter, war correspondent and wire service editor who took over a floundering City News Service in the mid-1950s and built it into a successful news-gathering organization.

Joe was known as a benefactor of out-of-work journalists who needed a second chance in the business, and he made helping people in need one of his major priorities. He was president of the Los Angeles Press Club when its journalism awards were launched because he felt it was important to recognize journalistic excellence in Southern California.

The press club decided to honor his memory with this award two years after his death.

  • 2001 - Dan Rather
  • 2000 - Patt Morrison
  • 1999 - Army Archerd
  • 1998 - Howard Rosenberg
  • 1997 - Bill Boyarsky
  • 1996 - Warren Olney
  • 1994 - Jess Marlow
  • 1993 - Jerry Dunphy
  • 1992 - Stan Chambers
  • 1991 - Jack Smith
  • 1990 - The Lozano Family
  • 1989 - Paul Conrad
  • 1988 - George Nicholaw
  • 1987 - Ted Koppel & Bill Stout
  • 1986 - Van Gordon Sauter
  • 1985 - Francis L. Dale
  • 1984 - Otis Chandler
  • 1983 - Louis D. Boccardi
  • 1982 - Tom Brokaw
  • 1981 - Walter Cronkite
  • 1980 - David and Kathy Mitchell