Special Events

AJHA Awards Luncheon| Local Journalist Reception |Donna Allen Roundtable Luncheon| Gala Dinner

Attendees enjoy a plated, table service lunch as AJHA honors the winners of the Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History and the National Award for Excellence in Teaching.

AJHA's highest honor, the Kobre Award recognizes individuals with an exemplary record of sustained achievement in journalism history through teaching, research, professional activities, or other contributions to the field of journalism history. Visit the Awards page later this summer for more information about this year's honoree.

AJHA annually bestows its Outstanding Local Journalist Award for Substantial Contribution to the Public Interest to a journalist local to the convention city whose work has had a positive impact on the community. The recipient serves as a featured speaker at the Thursday evening reception. Reception attendees enjoy hot and cold hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar at this event.

This year, AJHA  will honor NBC4 “Today in LA” co-anchor Lynette Romero and former editor of Long Beach’s Grunion Gazette Harry Saltzgaver.

Lynette Romero is the co-anchor of NBC4’s weekday morning newscast “Today in L.A.” She has more than three decades of broadcast news experience, having worked as an anchor, reporter, and producer. Romero joined NBC4 in 2022, after a long, distinguished career at Los Angeles station KTLA-TV where she anchored and reported in nearly every newscast. She is an award-winning broadcast journalist whose accolades include six Los Angeles area Emmy Awards, multiple Golden Mike Awards from the Radio and Television National News Association of Southern California, and the prestigious Excellence in Journalism Award by the National Hispanic Media Coalition. In 2022, Romero was named Latina Journalist of the Year by CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California.  

The television news anchor is deeply committed to the local community and active in countless charities and events that support students and underserved neighborhoods in Southern California. Romero is also dedicated to raising awareness of Alzheimer’s, memory loss, and dementia facing the aging population, having lost her mother to the debilitating disease.

AJHA’s second honoree, Harry Saltzgaver, has spent over four decades in the newspaper industry as a journalist, columnist, and editor, writing for both weekly and metropolitan daily papers. For over thirty years, he served as the executive editor of the Grunion Gazette, a Long Beach weekly publication. After stepping down from his editor role in 2023, he has continued writing a weekly column. In addition to his newspaper writing, Saltzgaver has also published two books; one is a compilation of his signature column, “A Pinch of Salt.” He has won several accolades for his journalistic work, including from the California News Publishers Association (CNPA). In 2014, Saltzgaver was named National Journalist of the Year for non-dailies by the Gazette’s parent company, Digital First Media.

Saltzgaver’s community involvement runs deep. He has served on various public and on-profit community boards and councils, including the Long Beach Water Commission, the Parks and Recreation Commission, Goodwill of Southern Los Angeles County, the Grand Prix Foundation of Long Beach, the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center and its Army Red Shield, the Public Corporation for the Arts, the local Chamber of Commerce, the Women Shelter of Long Beach, and the Rancho Los Alamitos Board of Trustees. He has been given a Lifetime Service Award from the Lifetime Learning Center at Long Beach City College, and in 2023, Goodwill of Southern Los Angeles County named him Community Leader of the Year. Currently, he is the treasurer of the Grand Prix Foundation of Long Beach and the vice chair of the St. Mary’s Medical Center Foundation Board of Trustees.

Donna Allen Roundtable Luncheon ♦ Friday, Sept. 26
Additional charge

The annual Donna Allen Luncheon celebrates contributions of women to the field of journalism. American Journalism Historians Association invites a woman journalist local to the convention city as its honored guest and featured speaker for the luncheon.

This year, AJHA is pleased to feature Nancy Rivera Brooks, former business editor with the Los Angeles Times. 

Nancy Rivera Brooks is an award-winning business journalist who has spent more than four decades writing and editing stories about the people and industries that shape the lives of Southern Californians.

A Los Angeles native and graduate of California State University Northridge, Rivera Brooks started her career in Texas as a business reporter at the El Paso Times. In 1982, she was hired to cover small and minority business for the Los Angeles Times. A year later, she was part of the team that produced a pioneering series on the Latino community, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for public service.

Rivera Brooks has written about nearly every industry, and she has worked to ensure that the newspaper’s coverage and staff reflect the diverse communities of Los Angeles. An editor since 2004, she guided reporters across the newsroom on topics including the energy industry, climate, real estate, labor and the supply chain. She helmed The Times weekly Hot Property section, which detailed the world of celebrity and luxury real estate. And she led the multiple-platform team that produced the “Repowering the West” series exploring the transition to clean energy, which received a Gerald Loeb Award as well as recognition from the California News Publishers Association and others. Rivera Brooks left daily journalism in 2024, retiring as deputy Business editor of the Los Angeles Times.

In 2017, Rivera Brooks was inducted into the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Hall of Fame in 2017. She was named one of California’s most influential Latina journalists in 2023 by the California Chicano News Media Association-Latino Journalists of California, and she became a board member of that nonprofit organization in 2024. Rivera Brooks received the 2023 Lawrence Minard Editor Award from the G. and R. Loeb Foundation and UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management – an annual award honoring excellence in business, financial and economic journalism editing.

Gala Dinner ♦ Saturday, Sept. 27 ♦ 
Additional Charge

The closing event for the annual AJHA convention enables attendees to gather as a group in a social setting. More information to come.