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ACES Education Fund President Merrill Perlman to receive Missouri Honor Medal

June 10, 2015 By ACES Staff Contests and Awards

ACES Education Fund President Merrill Perlman is among seven individuals and two media organizations who will receive the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism for 2015.

The Missouri Honor Medalists, announced today by the Missouri School of Journalism, will receive the honors on Monday, Oct. 26, during a banquet at the University of Missouri campus.

Perlman is a longtime ACES member whom many members know as a mentor and teacher and from her well-attended conference sessions that mix copy editing and management advice with humor,  such as “If I Knew Only.” She serves on the ACES Board of Directors and on the board of the Journalism & Women Symposium.

Perlman was the second winner of ACES’ Glamann Award, which ACES created to recognize people and organizations that have contributed to the society and the craft of copy editing.

According to the school, the Missouri Honor Medal honorees are  selected by the faculty of the Missouri School of Journalism on the basis of lifetime or superior achievement in journalism. The medals have been awarded annually since 1930 to outstanding journalists, advertising and public relations practitioners, and others and media organizations.

The full list of medalists for 2015 is:

Perlman received a bachelor of journalism from MU in 1974. She was a reporter at the Southern Illinoisan before joining the copy desk, then moved to the Des Moines Register copy desk in 1978, earned a master’s in mass communications from Drake University and became the Register’s assistant business editor.

In 1983, she was hired as a business copy editor at The New York Times, later becoming Metro copy desk chief (twice), night Metro editor, an editor on the Week in Review, recruiting editor for copy desks and managing editor of The New York Times News Service. In 2004, she was named director of copy desks, in charge of the 160-plus copy editors across the newsroom.

She retired from The Times in 2008 and started Merrill Perlman Consulting, where she edits high-level writers for ProPublica, Amazon Kindle Singles and Rosetta Books, among others.

She has trained thousands through the Poynter Institute’s NewsU and at news organizations, journalism conventions and private companies. She writes the “Language Corner” column for Columbia Journalism Review and is an adjunct assistant professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

During the day on Oct. 26, the medalists will present master classes on topics related to their areas of expertise to Missouri School of Journalism students and other guests.

Noted Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism in the past have included Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour, Sir Winston Churchill, Gloria Steinem, Deborah Howell, David Granger and Gordon Parks.

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