Laura Widmer is the 2026 Carl Towley Award recipient. This award is the Journalism Education Association’s highest honor and is presented to a member whose work is unusually beneficial and of superior value to the national JEA and to scholastic journalism.
Widmer will be honored at the Fall JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention in Orlando this November.
“Visionary. Problem solver. Champion of student journalists,” said former JEA Executive Director Linda Puntney, MJE. “I’ve heard Laura Widmer called a lot of things over the 50 years I have known her, but these three descriptors definitely come to the forefront time and time again.”
Puntney taught Widmer at Northwest Missouri State University and was her adviser on the Missourian newspaper and the Tower yearbook staffs.
“Her positive, can-do attitude then was a forerunner of the grit and determination she has now,” Puntney said. “Her resume tracks her career path after college. She worked professionally, taught high school journalism at Clinton, Missouri, where she discovered her life’s calling — working with students and introducing them to the journalism world she loved.”
When Widmer returned to NWMSU as an instructor, she established citywide distribution for the Northwest Missourian. The Tower yearbook was one of the first in the nation to include a CD-ROM as part of the publication. She started Heartland View, a regional tourism magazine, providing journalism students an opportunity to experience magazine journalism.
During this time, she also purchased her hometown newspaper when it was failing. In addition to providing her hometown with the Chariton Valley News Press, she created reporting internships for her NWMSU students.
“In 2015, she brought that same problem-solving, visionary thinking to the National Scholastic Press Association and Associated Collegiate Press,” Puntney said. “In the 11 years she has been in a leadership role, first as assistant director and then as executive director, she has changed the trajectory of the organizations.”
A few years into her job as director, Widmer played a major role in navigating both NSPA and JEA through the coronavirus pandemic, which ultimately canceled four in-person National High School Journalism Conventions. This required renegotiating hotel contracts and rebuilding conventions in virtual formats.
In 2021, when the Philadelphia Marriott required JEA and NSPA to host an event in the hotel as part of the legal negotiations to be released from the convention contract, Widmer launched the Philadelphia Storytelling Workshop. The workshop attracted approximately 625 attendees and fulfilled part of a contractual obligation with the Philadelphia Marriott, saving NSPA and JEA $250,000 in penalties. This event was in addition to the virtual convention JEA and NSPA were already hosting.
“Widmer’s calm and expert leadership not only saved both organizations from financial disaster, JEA/NSPA found innovative ways to virtually serve students and advisers,” said NSPA Associate Director Gary Lungden. “Both organizations are stronger today as a result.”
When Dallas County Schools, the longtime sponsor of what was then called the Gloria Shields Publication Workshop, shut down, the workshop was left without a home. Laura was approached to see if NSPA would be willing to partner with the workshop committee to help with running the program. For eight years now they’ve handled contracts and registration for the event, which has been rebranded as the Gloria Shields NSPA Media Workshop and continues to offer training for more than 500 students and advisers every summer.
“Laura is that person we know we can rely on, whether it‘s just for a smile and a hug, or to argue a contract with a hotel or AV company for a national convention,” Association of Texas Photography Instructors Executive Director Mark Murray said. “ And she makes you feel like you are the most important person in the world when you are around her.”
Louisa Avery, MJE, JEA Awards Committee chair