Hall of Fame inducts former publisher

Pat Siddons, alumnus and former IDS publisher, is one of four Hoosier journalists who will be inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame on April 7. Siddons retired in 1989 after 10 years as IDS publisher and was chosen as national college newspaper adviser of the year in 1983.\n"I really feel honored," Siddons said. "I'm in a group now with a lot of people who I really respect and I was wondering whether I was ever going to make it or not. Most of the people I worked with have already been elected."\nSiddons was born in Ellettsville and moved to Bloomington at the age of 5. After working for newspapers in Crawfordsville, Ind., and Michigan City, Ind., Siddons' job with the Louisville Courier Journal brought him home in 1969.\n"I was the bureau chief of the Bloomington bureau of the Louisville Courier-Journal," he said. \n"I was a one-man bureau … There was a lot of trouble on the college campuses in those days -- a lot of disruption and a lot of dissension. They wanted somebody here to cover it on a daily basis." \nHe became IDS publisher in 1979, after deciding he wanted to stay in Bloomington when the Courier Journal wanted him to return to Louisville.\n"In late 1978, they decided that the kids on the campus were going to start behaving and they didn't need a bureau anymore," Siddons said. "I didn't want to (leave), and at that time there was a search going on to replace Jack Backer, who had been publisher and had died … I went over to see the search committee, and I was selected."\nSiddons retired in 1989 and has lived in Bloomington since then. He said he always gave his students two pieces of advice: "challenge authority" and "don't assume anything." \n"It works most of the time," he said. "If you do those two things, you're going to be good at this business." \nThe other Hall of Fame inductees are:\n• Juliet V. Strauss, a Rockville native who wrote a column for the Ladies' Home Journal called "The Ideas of a Plain Country Woman" from 1905 until her death in 1918. She first wrote for her hometown Rockville Tribune newspaper and in 1903 began writing a regular column for The Indianapolis News.\n• John Bushemi, a Gary native, was a photographer for the Gary Post-Tribune when he joined the Army after the start of World War II. He was assigned to the Army-run Yank magazine and photographed combat operations in the Pacific. He was killed Feb. 19, 1944, by a mortar shell during the American invasion of Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. The award for best photo in the Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors photojournalism contest is named after Bushemi. \n• Frank Reynolds grew up in East Chicago and began his career at Hammond radio station WJOB in 1945. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked as an anchor and reporter at CBS and ABC stations in Chicago before joining the ABC network staff. Reynolds co-anchored ABC's evening news from 1968-70 and returned to the anchor chair in 1978 until his death in 1983 at the age of 59. \nThe Hall of Fame was created in 1966 by the Indiana professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and is located at DePauw University in Greencastle. \nThe Associated Press contributed to this story.