According to a story in the April 20 online Dallas Business Journal:
The new president of the Press Club of Dallas says he no longer believes the 2006 Katie Awards were judged at all. And the 2005 edition of the journalism and mass communications contest also is in question, club President Tom Stewart said Friday.
The club now plans to hire an attorney and seek a sworn statement from its former president, Elizabeth Albanese, Stewart added.
The Dallas Business Journal first reported April 14 that the Press Club of Dallas could not identify who judged the 2006 contest. The Katie program is the marquee event for the Press Club, which uses proceeds from the function to provide journalism scholarships to college students through the Press Club of Dallas Foundation, a nonprofit corporation.
Stewart late last week attempted to reach judges from a list of e-mail addresses provided to him by Albanese, who was chiefly in charge of finding judges to review the 2006 Katies entries.
"I received an e-mail back from one of them today," Stewart said following an executive session of the Press Club board of directors Friday. The e-mail, he added, said: "Yes, I did that. I helped participate in the process. And I'd be happy to do it again. Probably not to the extent that we did it last year."
Stewart said the e-mail contained the phone number of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.
"When I asked for the person, they indicated that no one worked in that particular building at St. Jude's by that name," Stewart said.
Contacted about identifying the judges Friday, Albanese said she was in meetings all day but would contact the judges herself, and "hopefully have an answer" by this weekend. In earlier interviews, she told the Dallas Business Journal that she couldn't name a judge and had not kept records of the judging but was working to reconstruct a list.
Besides hiring a law firm to take sworn statements, the Press Club also is hiring a forensic accountant to review its books, Stewart said Friday.
A review of Press Club records shows that a Press Club Foundation credit card in Albanese's name included charges from the W New York hotel, the Barton Creek Resort in Austin and Saks Fifth Avenue in Dallas.
