Jerry Ceppos, former Manship School of Mass Communication dean, professor and award winning journalist, died on Friday. He was 75.
He died from sepsis brought on by severe infection in his Baton Rouge home surrounded by his family on July 29, wife Karen Ceppos said.
Before moving away from reporting to begin instructing the next generation of journalists, Ceppos’ award-winning career spanned multiple papers from coast to coast, prioritizing diversity and communication everywhere he went.
“You can’t talk about his legacy without talking about the people he hired, the people he brought in, and he was crucial in that process,” said Josh Grimm, interim dean of the Manship School, who Ceppos hired as the associate dean for research and strategic initiatives. “It was the alumni he reconnected with; it was the students he helped. People are what make the Manship School what the Manship School is. And he was critical in helping that part of the school grow.”
For Ceppos, reporters were the basis behind reporting, so why not nurture them?
Ceppos’ ethos on prioritizing the people he was responsible for carried over from a four-decade career to his position as the Manship School’s dean from 2011 to 2018, where he also continued to teach as a William B. Dickinson Distinguished Professor teaching media ethics and social responsibility until his death.
Prioritizing the expansion of the school’s curriculum and the wellbeing of his students, he also sought to amplify the resources available to faculty and students for the best education possible.
“Dean Ceppos was a great teacher, mentor and person overall,” said Peter Rauterkus, mass communication junior and current sports editor at the Reveille. “He pushed us and was genuinely passionate about teaching us and making us better writers and journalists. I will always remember his passion and kindness and the impact he left on me will be felt for the rest of my career.”
His students recall his kindness and his attentiveness to their needs, even after brief conversations upon their first meeting. For Ceppos, attentiveness was an important part of every interaction, even after his students graduated.
“He gave me plenty of career advice and frequently emailed me about stories that he enjoyed,” said Andrea Gallo, a Manship School alumna and investigative reporter at the Advocate. “I peppered him with questions about journalism controversies, always interested in his take on what was going on. And whenever I had stories that involved gray areas of journalism ethics, I’d email him and tell him, ‘I’ve got a good example for your ethics classes.’”
He helped create programs essential to the education of mass communication, including LSU Cold Case Project and Statehouse Bureau, which gave student journalists real world experience and publication experience reporting unsolved Ku Klux Klan murders from before the Civil Rights Movement and state politics, respectively, for 90 publications across dozens of newspapers statewide.
The program is one of about a dozen nationwide offering coverage of state government from student journalists.
“The more we can send out student work year round, it is better for the students with clips and experiences, and helping the papers stay in business,” said Christopher Drew, a professor of journalism at the Manship School and director of both the Cold Case and Statehouse programs.
“(It was also) the public service of getting more news out to people, because he was concerned about the decline in newspapers and drops in readership numbers. And he wanted us to get more news out there to people.”
He also helped create the Social Media Analysis and Creation Lab, bringing mass communication education further into the 21st century, as well as establishing the school’s endowed chair in race, media and cultural literacy, the first of its kind anywhere in the country.
“He was a man who genuinely wanted and appreciated diversity, in the truest sense of the word,” said Tina Harris, Manship-Maynard Endowed Chair of Race, Media and Cultural Literacy. “Jerry wanted to elevate everyone and create parity where disparities reigned, displaying compassion and understanding along the way.”
Born in 1946 in Washington, D.C., and graduating from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland in 1969, Ceppos, hailing from a family of journalists, quickly joined the ranks of the New York-based Rochester Democrat and Chronicle as a reporter and editor for three years, before transitioning to the Miami Herald as an assistant managing editor, where he would stay for almost nine years.
By 1981, he moved west to join the editorial staff of the San Jose Mercury News as executive editor and senior vice president where he remained for 18 years.
It was around this time that Ceppos met his future wife, Karen, through a colleague from the Miami Herald. After Jerry moved to San Jose, Karen followed suit. By 1982, the couple was married.
During his nearly two-decade tenure at the California-based paper, his leadership brought two Pulitzer Prizes for 1985 reporting on a Philippine President’s controversial international dealings, as well as reporting on the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.
As editor in both Miami and San Jose, he developed an interest in the power of technology and new forms of reporting the news, including developing a master narrative, around which all news in the community would connect to.
After his tenure at the San Jose Mercury News, Ceppos became the vice president for news at the Knight-Ridder, at the time, the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country.
Between 1999 and 2005, he oversaw the company’s Washington and foreign bureaus and prioritized recruitment and diversity in newsrooms.
During his tenure at Knight-Ridder, he was awarded the Gerald M. Sass Award for Distinguished Service to Journalism and Mass Communications, the highest honor granted by the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, in 2002.
In 2008, the next step in his career was to share what he had learned over the past 35 years as the dean of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno for three years before finding his home in Baton Rouge.
“His lifelong goal was to be the editor of a big newspaper, (but) I think he found the greatest pleasure In his career, teaching and working closely with students,” said his wife, an academic in library information sciences herself. “I don’t think he ever realized it was something that would be so meaningful and rewarding to him.”
By 2016, he was named a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists for his “extraordinary contribution to the profession.” Years prior in 1997, he was one of three of the society’s inaugural recipients of the Ethics in Journalism award.
Additionally, he served on the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications for three decades, including six as president.
Even after a career in journalism and higher education that touched thousands of reporters, young and old, Ceppos never wavered in his championship of ethics and the social responsibility journalism held in modern society. He contributed to several books on the subject, including “Moral Reasoning for Journalists,” as well as a 2021 book he edited titled “Covering Politics in the Age of Trump.”
“Jerry had a way of making students feel like they were a key part of the Manship School, and that they were not just students, but professionals who were doing important work,” said Sam Karlin, reporter at the Advocate and alumni of the Manship School. “He put an imprint on tons of journalists who are working in the field today, myself included.”
Who reported the news was just as important to Ceppos, a champion of diversity in the newsroom, boardroom and classroom, as what was being reported. In addition to ensuring diversity was present in decision making in higher education at the Manship
School and beyond by advocating for the inclusion of diversity chairs on every search committee at the school, he increased the racial and ethnic diversity of staff at the San Jose Mercury News threefold.
“It was always so apparent, even obvious, that this was something Jerry truly cared about,” said Grimm, who worked with Ceppos in the effort to include diversity in committees. “It was who he was.”
Ceppos was particularly interested in championing the exploits of young reporters when their jobs put them in conflict with those in power.
Similarly, when Piper Hutchinson, current Reveille editor-in-chief and mass communication senior, was illegally removed from a faculty senate meeting last year, “Ceppos not only rebutted them in a letter, but publicly called them out on the most popular radio show in the state,” she explained.
“Anytime somebody tried to disrespect the work of Reveille reporters, Dean Ceppos was there to defend us,” Hutchinson said. “His loss will be deeply felt in the Hodges basement.”
Outside of journalism, Ceppos was a connoisseur of both wine and contemporary art, as well as being an avid pen collector. Merging his love for writing and pens, he wrote irregularly for a publication called Pen World Magazine, with a yet to be finished article about a California woman collecting pens from various film productions she has worked on.
“Always above all, the news,” Ceppos’ wife explained. “And telling it like it is.”
Ceppos is survived by his wife Karen and two children, Matthew and Robin, who live in Reno, Nevada, and Washington D.C., respectively.
He will be buried in Miami at a private funeral for family and friends, Grimm announced in a statement to Manship staff on Saturday. A public memorial service is planned for a later date, his wife explained.