Gloria Freeland, professor emerita in the A.Q. Miller School, and Susan Edgerley, former professor-in-residence, are two of 34 selected for induction into the 2023 Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is an honor roll of Kansas journalists who have made outstanding contributions to their profession. The induction ceremony will be Nov. 3, in Topeka.

Freeland, a native Kansan, was a professor for 37 years, retiring in May 2020. She was associate director of Student Publications, Inc. (now the Collegian Media Group) from 1983-1998, and director of the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media from 1998-2020. She served as the school’s internship coordinator, and she taught beginning reporting classes, advertising sales, and various community media courses designed to introduce students to the joy of working on weekly and small daily newspapers. She has a keen interest in history, and she assigned her journalism students the task of writing stories about World War II, rural Kansas schools, the sesquicentennial of Manhattan and Riley County, hometown grocery stores, and “lost towns” of Clay County, Kansas.

Susan Edgerley began a distinguished newspaper career at the Arkansas City Traveler after graduating from K-State in 1976 with degrees in English and journalism. More than four decades later, the long-time New York Times editor returned to her alma mater to inspire and support future journalists as a Professor-in-Residence. Edgerley was supervising 150 staffers as deputy metro editor at the Times when two planes hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. The coverage lasted four years. Her career led her to the Times in 1989 after four years as an assistant managing editor at the Philadelphia Daily News, six years as a reporter at the Wichita Eagle and three years as a reporter at the Arkansas City Traveler. She retired from the Times in 2012.

Up until this year, 140 Kansas journalists - just seven of them women - had been inducted into the hall. Minor changes were made to the selection process. One was removing the requirement to be an executive at a newspaper and adding “longtime employee” as the criterion. As a result, and in an effort to play catchup, 34 new members were nominated and selected for induction into the 2023 Hall of Fame. It is the largest class in the hall’s history, and this year’s class includes 30 women.