Newspaper Foundation names 4 to Hall of Fame

Texas Newspaper Foundation proudly announces the selection of four exemplary individuals — Gail Borden, Caro Brown, Ben Sargent and Griff Singer — to be inducted into the Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame for the year 2016. The induction ceremony will be conducted during the Texas Press 2016 Midwinter Conference and Trade Show on Jan. 22 at Embassy Suites Hotel, Spa & Conference Center in San Marcos. A selection committee met Nov. 12 and picked the inductees from a field of 30 nominees. Selection committee members included Phil Major, Terrell; Alvin Holley, Livingston; Mary Judson, Port Aransas; Greg Shrader, Kerrville and Randy Mankin, Eldorado. Austin-based Texas Newspaper Foundation created the hall of fame in 2006 to induct annually up to four individuals credited with outstanding achievements and contributions to the newspaper industry and to their communities. The first four inductees — Roy Eaton, Alfred H. Belo, James Roberts and Staley McBrayer — were named to the hall of fame in January 2007. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES GAIL BORDEN Texas pioneer surveyor and cartographer Gail Borden (1801-1874) cofounded the Telegraph & Texas Register in 1835 in San Felipe de Austin, headquarters for impresario Stephen F. Austin’s fledgling colony. Borden produced his newspaper on a hand-turned Washington Press, spreading the news of the colonists’ early battles in the break with Mexico in October 1835 and calling for volunteers to report to garrisons in Gonzales and San Antonio. Colonial delegates met in Washington-on-the-Brazos and produced a declaration of independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836. Borden published news of the declaration in his newspaper on March 5, 1836, and published Texian commander William Barrett Travis’s iconic letter “To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World,” written at the Alamo. Borden published an account of the Battle of the Alamo (Feb. 23 to March 6, 1836). After the battle, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and his forces moved eastward with a plan to vanquish the colonial uprising. As Santa Anna’s cavalry approached San Felipe, Borden loaded his press and type cases on wagons and joined in The Runaway Scrape, an evacuation of settlements in the path of Santa Anna’s pursuing army.

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