Gerri Berendzen named ACES’ 2026 Glamann Award winner
The Board of Directors of ACES: The Society for Editing has awarded its 2026 Glamann Award, ACES’ highest honor, to former ACES Board member and longtime news editor and teacher Gerri Berendzen.
The Glamann Award, named for ACES co-founder Hank Glamann, was created in 2007 to recognize people and organizations that have significantly contributed to ACES and the craft of editing. The Board of Directors decides whether to give the award each year and to whom.
Berendzen served on the ACES Board of Directors from 2006 to 2018, and during her tenure she did the work of an ACES staff member before ACES had a staff, acting as the organization’s communications director.
She was the editor of the ACES newsletter, back when it was laid out, printed, and mailed to members; she assembled the writers and edited all their material. She also served as the content editor for ACES website when its domain was copydesk.org.
Then in the mid-2010s, Berendzen served on the website redesign team that included ACES’ rebranding — new logos, new color palette, even a new domain, aceseditors.org.
Throughout her tenure, Berendzen played reporter, too. At each ACES in-person conference, she attended sessions with her laptop and quickly wrote articles about them for ACES’ website. And when news broke — such as at the annual session where new AP Stylebook entries were revealed — she turned articles into press releases that were picked up by national media and journalism organizations.
Soon she was leading teams of volunteer reporters to cover the conferences for those who couldn’t attend. Now every year she continues to get the scoop on new AP Stylebook entries ahead of ACES conferences and writes about them for ACES.
Indeed, journalism is where Berendzen established her editing roots more than four decades ago.
As she pursued her undergraduate degree with an emphasis in history at Saint Louis University, she joined the staff of University News, becoming its editor in the 1979-80 school year. She earned her master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1986.
She joined the Quincy Herald-Whig, on the Mississippi River in western Illinois, in 1989 as a wire editor and copy editor. She built a career at the newspaper over 24 years, ultimately advancing to the role of editorial production coordinator. But really she had done anything and everything related to news editing: steering breaking news coverage, editing copy on deadline, writing headlines, laying out pages, editing and posting for the website, and producing print and online graphics. She was part of both print and website redesign teams.
For 18 years of her career in Quincy, Berendzen also taught mass communication classes at John Wood Community College. The teaching experience would lead her, in 2014, to make a major career change and take a job back at Mizzou. She became the Knight Visiting News Editor and Assistant Professor, where she taught student copy editors at the Columbia Missourian and other students in copy editing courses.
Two years later, she became the editorial adviser for the Daily Kansan at the University of Kansas, where she would climb the ladder again. In two years’ time, she became a lecturer in the journalism and mass communications school; now, she’s also the coordinator of the Bremner Editing Center.
Berendzen has been teaching ACES members for decades, too. She’s presented on critical editing, online editing tools, online audience engagement, newsroom leadership, and working on small staffs. She’s appeared at in-person conferences, virtual conferences and webinars, and regional ACES workshops around the country.
Plus, she started and led ACES’ online social media chats.
Berendzen continues presenting and otherwise playing a role in ACES conferences and training today. And she is now contributing to ACES as a member of the communication and publications committee and the editing research task force.