Colleen (Koky) Dishon (Inducted 1997)

Dishon was hired by the Chicago Tribune in 1975 to redirect the paper's Tempo section into a general features section. Before she left the Tribune in 1994, she was responsible for starting at least 15 new sections for the paper, including KidNews, WomanNews, a newspaper wrap-around for commuters called Evening News and Friday, a weekend entertainment and activities guide.

Former WomanNews colleague Margaret Carroll best sums up Koky: "It's a challenge to match her stamina," Carroll says. "but she has hiked along ahead of us, and then, when our energy lagged, she reached down to pull us up to the top of the mountain again and again."

Before joining the Tribune, Dishon was Editor and President of a news/features service she founded and held a variety of editor positions at the Zanesville (Ohio) Sunday Times Signal, Chicago Daily News, Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel and the Columbus Dispatch. She became Assistant Managing Editor/Features for the Tribune only six years after she was hired (1981) and a year later became the first woman on the paper's masthead.

Dishon still remains active as a consultant and wrote a chapter entitled "We've Come Along Way - Maybe" in the recently published Media Studies Journal's Defining Moments in Journalism.