Byline Award

Jim Lackey, Jour ’74
Falls Church, Va.

To Jim Lackey, the word “service” in Catholic News Service was as integral to its mission as the words “Catholic” and “News.” As a wire service, like the Associated Press, CNS provided breaking news and updates to clients around the world. During his career, Jim successfully navigated Catholic journalism, working his way from reporter to editor and manager of CNS web services.

During his time as a federal reporter for CNS, Jim saw two U.S. presidents up close in the Oval Office: Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Jim says one of his favorite assignments was standing in Washington’s Lafayette Park in 1979, watching St. John Paul II come down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

Jim recalls the influence of journalism professor David Host, who emphasized that it was important for journalists to love their readers. To Jim, this meant writing in a way that helped readers understand complicated topics using understandable words, sentences and paragraphs. He credits his Marquette classes in philosophy and theology with teaching him concepts that helped him serve his readers throughout his career.

In 2014, Jim won the St. Francis de Sales Award, the highest honor given by the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada. He was honored for “the first-rate quality of his reporting and editing and the wide reach of work” in his more than 40 years in the Catholic press and “for his tireless dedication to make the Catholic press great.”

Fun Facts:

Name someone (past or present) with whom you’d like to have dinner.

The smart-aleck in me wants to say Jesus because then I could ask Him for what amounts to a 2,000-year job review of how well or poorly humanity had interpreted and implemented His teachings. And if He wasn’t available, I’d want to ask a gathering of America’s Founding Fathers how well or poorly we were interpreting and implementing our 225-year-old great experiment in democracy.

Name a Marquette faculty or staff member who had an impact on you, and how.

In addition to my mention above of David Host, the rest of the journalism faculty and staff — people like Warren Bovee, James Arnold, George Reedy, Ed Pepin — were all top rate and had an impact on my career.