Cash named 1st UT J-school Griff Singer fellow

By Ken Fountain
The Baytown Sun

BAYTOWN — Wanda Garner Cash, publisher and editor of The Baytown Sun since August 1999, has been named as the first fellow to the newly created S. Griffin Singer Professorship at the University of Texas at Austin.

Cash, Texas Press Association’s 2004-05 president, will begin her new position in the fall term as distinguished senior lecturer and fellow in the School of Journalism in the university’s College of Communications.

“Wanda is a valued friend and colleague who will be missed not only by me, but also her extended SNI family,” said Lissa Walls Vahidiek, chief operating officer for Southern Newspapers, parent company of the Sun. “She has been a leader in her newspaper, in this company and in the Baytown community. Even though it is difficult to see her depart, I am delighted for her that she is fulfilling a lifelong dream. The University of Texas and its journalism students are fortunate to have her as a professor.”

The new professorship was endowed with a $350,000 gift from McAllen businessman Joe Phillips and his family. Phillips created the professorship to honor his former professor and enhance the journalism school’s undergraduate reporting and editing curriculum.

Singer, a newsman and longtime journalism professor at the school, recently retired from full-time teaching. Reached by phone, he said he was doubly honored first to have a professorship named after him and second to have Cash appointed as its first holder.

“I was a working journalist and teacher. I love working and helping develop young people to become journalists, and I see Fluffy doing the same thing,” said Singer.

Cash is known far and wide as Fluffy for her sometimes-wild mane of red hair. Many who have worked with her also call her Czarina for her passionate commitment to journalistic standards.

“She was as lively and aggressive then as she is now,” Singer said of the time when Cash was his student. “She was somebody who would not be afraid to tackle any kind of assignment, anytime, anywhere.”

Singer said Cash’s success as a mentoring editor of young journalists is shown in the number of people who have worked for her who have gone on to larger newspapers.

“She’s somebody who goes after quality and tries to help young people develop, rather than hold them back. I think that’s why she’ll be so successful in the classroom,” he said.

Cash received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from UT in 1971. She received a certification as a secondary reading specialist from the university’s Graduate School in Education in 1975.

Cash said she was honored by the opportunity to follow in her mentor’s footsteps.

“At the same time, it is hard to leave Baytown, where I have deep community involvement and so many friends,” she said.

Cash said her new role is an extension of one of the primary facets of her career: coaching and mentoring young journalists in newspapers across Texas.

Before taking the reins at the Sun, Cash was an assistant managing editor of The Galveston County Daily News, editor of the Kerrville Daily Times, and executive editor of the Brazosport Facts, all SNI newspapers.

Earlier, she was publisher and owner (with husband Richard) of The Ingram News in rural central Texas for eight years. TPA named the paper the best weekly in the state in its circulation class in 1985.

Cash served on TPA’s board of directors from 1998-2006, and is immediate past chairman of the board.

Cash has been an active member of the Legislative Advisory Committee jointly comprised of members from TPA and the Texas Daily Newspaper Association. In this role and others, Cash has been a longtime advocate of open government, often testifying before committees of the Texas Legislature, organizing freedom of information education efforts, and lobbying for public access to government records and meetings.

In April, the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors association honored Cash with the Jack Douglas Award for outstanding service to journalism.

In 2005, she led a media coalition lobbying for the state’s first “shield law” for reporters. In 2004, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips named her to the Judicial Advisory Council’s Committee on Public Access to Court Records.

Cash also has served as president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. As part of a FOIFT delegation, Cash traveled to Mexico in 1998 to meet with newspaper editors hoping to draft that country’s first freedom of information laws.

As a delegate of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Cash went on a study mission to Cuba in October 2002.

Cash is the fifth publisher in the 84-year history of the Sun, and the first woman to hold the position. Her predecessors are: Robert Matherne, Fred Hartman, Leon Brown and Gary Dobbs.