By BRIAN TUREK
J Alumni News staff
In 1975, the Hitchcock Foundation gave the University of Nebraska–Lincoln $250,000 to help the College of Journalism and Mass Communica-tions’ graduate program.
One new building and several journalism graduates later, Gilbert and Martha Hitchcock and their foundation are immortalized in the Hitchcock Room in Andersen Hall
The original gift has grown to
$1 million, and the foundation has helped fund the Andersen Hall renovation.
The Hitchcock Room has hardwood floors, reference books and plenty of graduate theses on display to help other graduate students on their own projects.
Thomas Burke, the secretary for the Hitchcock Foundation, said the foundation had made a major contribution to the College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
“The Hitchcock Foundation has supported the University of Nebraska for several years,” Burke said. “We want Nebraska to have the best journalism school in the country.”
Martha Hitchcock started the Hitchcock Foundation in 1944 in memory of her late husband, Gilbert, who founded the Omaha World-Herald in 1889. Martha Hitchcock died in 1962 and left $5 million to the Hitchcock Foundation. Denman Kountze, the Hitchcocks’ great-nephew, has been the president of the Hitchcock Foundation since 1984.
Kountze, a retired reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, holds to the same journalism standards as the Hitchcocks did.
“(Reporters need) to learn how to cover the news and not drag their prejudices along when they do it,” Kountze told the Journalism Alumni News in 1999.
Burke, an Omaha attorney, said the Hitchcock Foundation’s goal was “to educate graduate students and keep them in the state.”
The Hitchcock Foundation has granted money to other educational organizations, he said, and has made recent donations to the Omaha Botanical Gardens and the Strategic Air Command Museum in Omaha.
Will Norton Jr., dean of the journalism college, said the college would not be what it is today without the Hitchcock Foundation’s long-term commitment to the program — and to the new building as well.