The Stanford Daily inducted 21 former staff members into The Stanford Daily Hall of Fame on Thursday. The second annual ceremony honored alumni for their contributions to The Daily and to journalism post-graduation. 

Alumni arrived on campus Thursday for the start of Reunion Homecoming. Family and friends of the inductees, along with other alumni and current Daily staffers, attended the ceremony at the Haas Center.

Editor-in-chief George Porteous ’27, business director In Ho Lee ’09 and Graduate School of Business (GSB) lecturer and New York Times editor Glenn Kramon ’75 made up the committee that reviewed Hall of Fame nominees.  

“It was incredibly special to get all of these people in a room together to watch them trade memories,” Porteous said. 

Porteous and Caroline Chen ’26 M.S. ’27, chief operating officer, hosted the ceremony and presented engraved paperweights to the honorees. 

“It’s inspiring that they’re all so humbled to be having this award,” Chen said. “They’ve won Pulitzer Prizes, and they’re still so grateful to be in The Stanford Daily Hall of Fame.”

Many inductees joined publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, ESPN and The Atlantic, after their time at The Daily. At The New York Times, Douglas Jehl ’84 contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan. He later became international editor at The Washington Post.

Sally Jenkins ’82, another inductee, was the first woman inducted into the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame and was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. 

“Many of them who have retired have given considerable time to supporting us through volunteer work, and I’m very grateful for that because it feels as though everything we’re doing now rests on a foundation that took decades and decades to build up,” Porteous said. 

Along with careers in journalism, honorees also went into fields like law, policy and academia. Jim Wascher ’75 argued cases before the Illinois Supreme Court as a civil, municipal and public-sector lawyer, and Tom Dawson ’70 held senior positions at the Treasury Department and in the Reagan White House. Larry Diamond ’74 and James Higa ’81 went on to teach at Stanford; Diamond has taught courses on democracy and foreign policy, and Higa teaches at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. 

“The variety of fields these people have all gone into is a testament to how special of a place The Daily is and what it gives to people — not only in terms of skill but also in terms of community,” Porteous said. 

After the ceremony, alumni and staffers gathered for a reception at the Daily House. 

“It was very cool to see the long careers of people who have started at The Daily and how much The Daily meant to them,” said Julia Ingram ’21, vol. 256 editor-in-chief. “I think that was definitely a theme that permeated through all of the bios — how important The Daily was to them even if they didn’t go into journalism. The Daily was definitely a special part of my Stanford experience.” 

Later that day, Ingram and other Daily alumni from the Class of 2021 visited the House during print production night. Enjoying leftover snacks from the ceremony, they chatted with current staffers and reminisced about past evenings spent in the same room. 

“A lot of it is the same. You’ve still got the issues framed on the wall. It definitely feels like back at production,” Ingram, now a data journalist at CBS News, said. 

Ingram and her friends gathered around The Daily’s archive cabinets upstairs, flipping through issues they worked on. Michael Espinosa ’21, part of Ingram’s cohort at The Daily, held many roles during his time there: social media managing editor, university and local desk editor, and social chair. He also served as a staff writer for sports, The Grind and arts and life.

“I made this my personality,” he said. “You guys have done some cleaning up because back then, it was super super messy. But in so many ways, it still feels so familiar, and I felt right back at home.”

The Daily usually orders food for production night every Thursday, and Espinosa said he was disappointed there was no takeout from Treehouse. 

“We used to get it every night,” he said. “It was two pizzas, one pepperoni, one regular and then there were a couple teriyaki bowls. I would always get the chicken teriyaki bowl.”

After graduating, Espinosa worked as a fellow for Business Insider, social media manager at an e-sports media company and as a new language teacher. Now, he is a docent and educator at the New York Transit Museum. 

“I feel like I walked into a museum, but a very personal museum, like picking up artifacts from the past,” Espinosa said of returning to The Daily. “It feels like walking into the past and looking at clues to see how life was then or is like now.”

Reunion Homecoming activities continue through Sunday, including class lunches and panels, tours, department events and the Stanford vs. Elon football game on Saturday. 

“This is what reunion is about,” Espinosa said. “I’m so glad I’m back. [It’s] so much fun.”