Four newspaper legends were inducted Oct. 3, 2025 into the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame during a dinner held in the Simone Ballroom at Saint Kate — The Arts Hotel, located at 139 E. Kilbourn Ave. in Milwaukee.
The Wisconsin Newspaper Association was a presenting sponsor of the 2025 Milwaukee Press Club Media Hall of Fame Dinner and Ceremony.
The four newspaper legends inducted included:
Tannette Johnson-Elie, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
“It means a great deal to me and something I never imagined I would ever achieve. As I explained in my acceptance speech, I didn’t set out to win awards or accolades, all I ever wanted to do was to tell stories to uplift and inspire others,” Johnson-Elie wrote when asked to reflect on the induction by the WNA. “I certainly didn’t think anyone was paying attention to my work and career journey all these years.
“So, when my former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel colleague Jim Nelson called to tell me I was being inducted, I cried tears of joy. It’s truly an honor to be recognized and I wear it proudly.
“As an African American woman, I know how much my success matters and the tremendous example I am setting for the younger generations,” Johnson-Elie added. “I want young people to know don’t chase awards or make their job a competition. Just keep doing your best and putting out your best effort and one day you might look up and realize someone has noticed. You might just find yourself in the Hall of Fame.”
She said she owed her HOF induction to several different individuals.
“I’ve heard that my name came up multiple times, so I’m not sure who first started the process,” Johnson-Elie added. “But I am aware that two people who played key roles were documentary filmmaker Joanne Williams, also a Hall of Famer, who nominated me, and Tom Heinen, former Journal Sentinel religion editor, who was inducted alongside me and completed the paperwork necessary to move my nomination forward. I am deeply grateful to them both.”
Johnson-Elie also had praise for a former WNA board president.
“Beyond that, I owe this honor to the many people who opened doors for me and gave me opportunities to do meaningful work. That includes Keith Spore, former Journal Communications publisher, who hired me on the spot in 1989 to work as a general reporter at the Sentinel while he was managing editor,” she added. “I also owe credit to Wisconsin Watch CEO George Stanley, who was business editor for the Sentinel when he hired me as the first Black woman reporter and later columnist on the Sentinel’s and Journal Sentinel’s business news staff.”
Johnson-Elie also credited “the many communities that have supported me along the way” including her Journal Sentinel family, her Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service family, Marquette University, her UW-Parkside family, her NABJ–Milwaukee family, and “my many mentors over the years,” including a few Black women Hall of Famers: Carole Meekins, Liddie Collins, Denise Reistad-Calloway and Joanne Williams.
“Most of all, I owe this honor to the Milwaukee community,” Johnson-Elie wrote, “for embracing a young Black girl from the South Side of Chicago and allowing me to do this work.”
When asked for advice for journalists entering the field, Johnson-Elie said, “I would tell journalists today to stay true to your craft—keep developing your skills and be a lifelong learner. At one point, I got busy being a wife and mom and didn’t take as much time to sharpen my skills through training and learning opportunities. After my youngest finished high school, I went back and earned a master’s degree. It was the best thing I ever did for myself, both professionally and personally, because it renewed my confidence, expanded my perspective, and opened new doors in my career.”
Kristyn Halbig Ziehm, Ozaukee Press. Honored for her 43-year in journalism at the Port Washington newspaper, Halbig Ziehm has won awards from the WNA and the National Newspaper Association for everything from news and in-depth reporting to business and feature writing, according to the Ozaukee Press.
“Being a member of the Hall of Fame is humbling and kind of surreal — it’s not something I ever imagined would happen to me. I don’t consider myself anything special, and I know so many other talented journalists,” Halbig Ziehm wrote when asked for a reflection on her induction by the WNA. “I’m just a reporter who works hard to make sure the people I represent have the information they need to make good decisions about their life and community.
“And I consider my induction into the hall a nod to community journalism, and that’s something I’m passionate about. We are the media that’s closest to our readers — they’re the people we see at church and at the store every day,” Halbig Ziehm added. “They aren’t shy about telling us how they feel about things that are happening.”
She said she owed her induction to several people, including her parents.
“I owe my nomination to many people — my parents, who taught me the importance of news on the local, state and national levels; my family, who supported me all these years when I worked during the day and again at night to cover meetings and events; my college professors at UW-Eau Claire who gave me the basics and encouraged their students to get real-world experience; Jeff Seering, my editor at the Reedsburg Times-Press, where I interned, who gave me some of that experience — and trusted me, a college kid, to put out the paper for a week while he was on vacation; all my colleagues through the years, who pushed me and challenged me and helped me; to the Schanen family, owners and operators of Ozaukee Press, where I’ve worked for 43-1/2 years. Bill Schanen III hired me right out of college and put his faith in me, and his son Bill Schanen IV, who as my editor today continues to trust me,” Halbig Ziehm wrote. “They are consummate journalists who expect excellence of their staff and model excellence. They trust their staff and support their reporters.”
Advice for journalists just entering the field begins with three words.
“My advice to journalists today is simple —hang in there. Today our profession is vilified, but we have to remember how important it is and realize that the best way to fight is to do our best job,” Halbig Ziehm wrote. “We have to remember that we represent people who don’t otherwise have a voice. While community leaders have a podium to voice their views, which we have a duty to report, their constituents often don’t have a way to make their feelings known unless we represent them, so we owe it to them to reflect them as well.
“As a community journalist, I think our communities trust us more than the larger media,” Halbig Ziehm added. “But there’s still distrust out there, and we need to be mindful of that and work harder than ever not to betray the trust we have.
“Reporting is hard. Writing is hard,” Halbig Ziehm concluded. “But it is the most rewarding thing in the world, and it is so important, especially today.”
“Kris has earned her place beside the outstanding daily and television journalists in the Milwaukee Press Club with a career at Ozauke Press that began as a new college graduate fresh from journalism school and has seen her polish the craft of newspaper reporting and news writing to the highest standards,” said Ozaukee Press publisher William Schanen III.
Tom Heinen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (retired). Heinen said the Hall of Fame induction “is a recognition of my work from my peers, present and former journalists whom I deeply respect” when asked to reflect on the honor by WNA.
“Preparing for this induction induced me to pause and reflect upon a 33-year career. That career path led to 31 years of reporting and editing at The Milwaukee Journal/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and began with the City News Bureau of Chicago – a gritty journalism training ground where would-be reporters were sent alone to cover crime and government stories at any hour of the day or night in the pre-cell phone era with the stern admonition, ‘If your mother says she loves you, check it out’,” Heinen wrote about his induction.
When asked to what or whom he owes his career in journalism, Heinen pointed to a teacher.
“If I trace the genealogy of my career far enough, I must conclude that I very likely would not have found my path were it not for a high school teacher who taught me the fundamentals of news and feature writing , inspired me with his enthusiasm, and provided the opportunity to write for the school newspaper,” Heinen wrote.
“The University of Notre Dame, where I majored in communication arts, provided me with much knowledge and many experiences, but it did not have a journalism department or program. Also, I must thank Mark Zoromski, a fellow past-president of the Milwaukee Press Club, for nominating me for the Hall of Fame. As an editor and as a reporter, I tended to put myself in the background and did not really share many of my reporting experiences with my coworkers. In the day-to-day hustle and bustle of a newsroom, there was a certain degree of unspoken assumption that unusual challenges are simply part of the job, that they come with the territory, and you need to find the next story or move on to the next assignment,” Heinen added.
He said he had wished he had publicly thanked Francesca Pica, the UW-Madison senior who interviewed him, wrote the biography that was printed in the dinner program, and did the verbal introduction of him as I was about to be inducted.
“Stepping back to think about the hundreds of stories and experiences in my career was more meaningful and moving than I had anticipated,” Heinen reflected about the event for WNA.
“That, plus the celebratory induction at the Hall of Fame dinner, made me feel a bit like Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer secretly attending his own funeral from the back of a church when townspeople mistakenly thought that he and Huck Finn had drowned,” Heinen added. “In the opening paragraph of my comments at the event, I quipped that at my age I’d need to hold a séance or prayer vigil to thank everyone who had supported and inspired me in my career but that those people at the dinner who could hear me probably aren’t in that group.”
Heinen added some words of wisdom for journalists entering the field.
“Three pieces of advice for student journalists, based on my domestic and international experience – including two years interacting with the public as the Milwaukee Journal’s reader contact editor/ombudsman:
“Read, watch, travel, and experience as much as you can. You never know where your professional path will take you, but there is no doubt that you will need to gather, understand, distill, and convey information on many facets of life.
“Listen carefully to both the powerful and the powerless. What you do not only informs society and holds decision-makers accountable. It also has a very real effect on the reputations, hopes, and dreams of everyday people, sometimes with unexpected impacts,” Heinen wrote.
“Once, when I took the time to listen to a greatly distraught woman whose phone call had bounced around from other desks to mine, the stories that I wrote about her frustrated efforts to help her mentally ill adult daughter ultimately led to her founding what became the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Southeast Wisconsin. There was nothing exceptional on my part beyond taking the time to listen.
“And finally, when done with integrity, reporting news and features as objectively, factually, and fearlessly as humanly possible across political, ideological, cultural, and religious lines is a cause beyond self,” Heinen concluded, “a path toward a life well-lived.”
Lori Nickel, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“Our Hall of Fame keeps getting better and better,” said Tom Daykin, MPC president. “This year’s honorees represent the best in local journalism. It’s so critically important to celebrate their impactful work and dedication to our industry and community.”
The MPC established the Milwaukee Media Hall of Fame in 1980 to honor the men and women who shaped journalism in the Milwaukee area.
The club’s Past President’s Council nominates the inductees, with those nominations going to the club’s board of governors for approval.
In 1988, the club added a posthumous honor. It is now customary to annually induct five living and five deceased journalists into the hall.
The inductions are made during a fall banquet. Previous HOF inductees included Tom Haudricourt (2024), Meg Jones (2022), Meg Kissinger (2019), Jim Miklaszewski (2016), Don Walker (2016), Vince O’Hern (2014), David Zweifel (2013), Vern Arendt (2008), Jim Clifford (2006), Bud Lea (2004), Elliott Maraniss (2003) and Frank Aukofer (2001).
For additional information about the inductees, contact Lexie Deblitz, MPC executive director, at lexie@milwaukeepressclub.org.
