Summer Satellite Reunion in Online Orbit (via Zoom)

Annual gathering of alumni and students of The Michigan Daily, Michiganensian Yearbook, Gargoyle Humor Magazine, and SHEI Magazine (this year, again via Zoom). Board chair and former Daily news reporter Peter Mooney is our host. Featured speakers are followed by breakout sessions for Q&A, career networking, and social dialogue. Free and open to alumni and students of Student Publications. Email Lisa Powers, Stewardship & Alumni Relations Officer for the Office of Student Publications, request login information.

One of our featured alumni speakers at the #SummerSatelliteReunion2021 is Terry LaBan, former comic artist for The Gargoyle Humor Magazine and editorial cartoonist for The Michigan Daily. He's drawn up a unique vocation for himself, so tune in to hear (and see) more about it. 

Also spotlighted are author/filmmaker Buddy Moorehouse whose recently published "Death of an Elvis Girl" is getting great attention. A film he produced several years ago is coming up lately in discussions about Fielding Yost and the Willis Ward scandal which involved UM Football teammate Gerald R. Ford, who went on to become a US President. 

In conversation, our 2021 Editor-in-Chief Claire Hao and Summer EIC Calder Lewis will speak with former Daily EIC Rebecca Blumenstein of the New York Times, about the challenges of covering the news and campus remotely that student journalists have tackled, and what the coming year and longer term future of the Daily looks like. 

Also, two former staffers of the Daily Editorial Page sit down to reflect back on their teamwork together in the late 1990s, both going off to Yale Law School afterward, and their divergent careers. Former US Treasury staffer under Bush and Trump administrations, attorney Brent McIntosh sits down with attorney Julie Becker, an associate judge on the Superior Court of D.C. who was nominated by Obama, to reflect on the issues they debated and expressed on the Opinion Page and their views and remembrances today.

BIOS of Featured Guests:

• Terry LaBan (UM Stamps '84) is a cartoonist, graphic recorder and illustrator, and former Gargoyle artist as well as former Daily editorial cartoonist. He worked for 14 years in the comic book industry as an artist and writer for Fantagraphics Books, Dark Horse Comics, DC Vertigo and Disney Egmont, and his illustration work has appeared in many publications including Mad Magazine, Nickelodeon Magazine and Details. From 2001 to 2015 he and his wife Patty created the daily comic strip “Edge City,” which was syndicated by King Features Syndicate and appeared in newspapers nationwide. Terry is a graphic recorder and facilitator and his company, Breakthrough Visuals, also creates finished illustrations, explainer comics and infographics for businesses and organizations.

• Buddy Moorehouse (LSA '82) worked on the sports staff of the Michigan Daily from 1979-82, serving as a sports editor and columnist his senior year. He was a career journalist, spending 26 years as an editor at the Livingston County Daily Press and Argus in Howell, Mich. He moved into documentary filmmaking in 2010, and produced two Emmy-nominated sports documentaries, including "Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game." His films have aired on PBS, ABC, Fox Sports Detroit and the MLB Network, as well as Amazon Prime. His latest project is a true-crime Hollywood novel called "Murder of an Elvis Girl: Solving the Jenny Maxwell Case." The book, which has been featured in LA Magazine, the Detroit Free Press and on several true-crime podcasts, tells of the heartbreaking Hollywood rise and fall of Jenny Maxwell, a famous actress from the 1960s who was murdered in 1981 - and was Buddy's mother's first cousin. The book reveals for the first time who killed Jenny and why. Buddy is also a professor of documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.

• Rebecca Blumenstein (LSA '97) was named Deputy Editor, Publishers Office of the NYT, in February 2021. In her role, she works closely with publisher A.G. Sulzberger to support The Times’s rapidly growing journalism operations. Ms. Blumenstein previously held the title of deputy managing editor, where she focused on making The Times an essential destination for live coverage and breaking news. Previously, she rose to deputy editor in chief and Page One editor of The Wall Street Journal, where she also served as China bureau chief, overseeing the team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Ms. Blumenstein began her career at the Tampa Tribune. She was named to the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship in 2009, and is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she served as editor in chief of the Michigan Daily.

• Claire Hao is the 2021 Editor-in-Chief of The Michigan Daily and a rising senior at the University of Michigan. She was previously on the News section, where her work covering campus protests and Title IX first sparked her interest in journalism. Claire is a news intern for Bloomberg Law's corporate desk this summer, and she interned on the metro desk of the Chicago Tribune last summer.

• Calder Lewis is the 2021 Summer Editor-in-Chief of The Michigan Daily and a rising senior in the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. During the school year, he directs The Daily’s coverage of U-M administration, conducting monthly interviews with President Schlissel. This summer, Calder is also a media intern for CARE, a non-profit fighting global poverty.