Nancy Hicks Maynard, who helped bring enormous changes for diversity within the media, died Sept. 21, 2008, in Los Angeles. She was 61. Her family said that she had been ill for several months and that her death resulted from the failure of several major organs, according to the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Launching the St. Louis Beacon has been thrilling and terrifying, meaningful and confusing. Every day, I’m grateful to be part of this nonprofit online-only regional news adventure. We’re casting a stone into the pond of the future of journalism. You should throw some, too. Mike Miner of the Chicago Reader captured why this is so much fun when he asked me, “Doesn’t it feel good to be on the right side of history for a change?” Yes, it does.

Frances Lewine, pioneering journalist and longtime Journalism and Women Symposium member, died on January 19, the day before she would have celebrated her 87th birthday by going to the races. She had a long and groundbreaking career, which included covering the administrations of six presidents from Eisenhower to Carter. She was a leader among women journalists from the 1950s onward, protesting discrimination against women in jobs and assignments; her efforts helped lead such groups as the National Press Club to open their membership to women.

Tad Bartimus was the Associated Press' first female bureau chief and its first female special correspondent, a rare title only a few reporters earn (including JAWS member Linda Deutsch). Tad received the Washington Press Club's Lifetime Achievement Award Feb. 13, 2008, at the annual Congressional Dinner. As a young woman, Tad was one of the few female war correspondents in Vietnam (and contributed to a book about that experience, "War Torn: Stories of War by the Women Who Reported the Vietnam War."

Dawn Garcia, deputy director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists, has become president of the Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS), a national organization of women journalists. Garcia, who spent 18 years as a newspaper reporter and editor before being appointed to her current position at Stanford University in 2000, will serve as the organization's first two-year president. She succeeds Julie Dunlap, a freelance editor in Santa Fe, N.M.

Journalists today know that they must innovate for their print, broadcast and online media outlets to survive. Key to developing those innovations will be the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, headed by executive director (and JAWS member) Pam Johnson. In the institute's journalism futures laboratory, teams of students, faculty and visitors will develop prototype innovations for delivery to media audiences.

The Journalism & Women Symposium joins the National Association of Black Journalists and others who have expressed disgust and outrage at the racist and misogynist remarks made by radio personality Don Imus. Last week, Imus called members of the Rutgers basketball team - who had just played for the national championship - "nappy-headed hos."

The first time I met Molly Ivins was in Houston back before half of you were born. A college friend of mine was working for one of the newspapers there (and they had two then, by golly) and so several of us got together and swilled down more bottles of Lone Star beer than I care to remember.

Joan Cook, who died of breast cancer in 1995 in New York, was a founding director of JAWS, a journalist, a union leader, a moral leader and generous friend to three generations of people engaged in the work of making the world a more just place. She was one of seven named plaintiffs -- and a moving force -- in a class action sex discrimination suit against the New York Times filed in 1974.

Eileen Shanahan, a world-class journalist, champion of social justice and founding director of the Journalism & Women Symposium, died at her Washington home Nov. 2. She was 77. The cause of death is undetermined, but Eileen, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, had been in failing health. Eileen was a legendary figure as a reporter and mentor for other women and people of color long before she came to her first JAWS in 1988. She served on the first JAWS board of directors in 1990, bringing wide experience in organizational management to the job of transforming a women's network into an educational and cultural organization.

Nancy Woodhull was at the podium introducing linguist Deborah Tannen, a long- sought-after speaker for JAWS camp. Woodhull had arranged to get Tannen on our dance card in Napa last fall. They were, after all, friends from when Woodhull was a news executive who had read “You Just Don't Understand.'' Woodhull not only got the message, she passed it on.

Nancy Jane Woodhull, who died Tuesday (April 1) at her home in Pittsford, N.Y., said at her last JAWS camp that she was glad Tannen was there with us in California in September because JAWS was special and always ``filled my well.''

Theo Wilson, a journalist whose coverage of America’s history-making trials from Sam Shepard to John De Lorean made her the dean of trial reporters, died early Friday in Los Angeles. Wilson, whose memoir, “Headline Justice,” was published this week by Thunders Mouth Press, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage as she prepared to give a TV interview about the book Thursday night. She was believed to be about 78, but her age was a closely guarded secret. “A woman who will tell you her age will tell you anything,” she said.