The day before her first video news story was due, Danielle Stobb marched into UWM senior lecturer Mark Zoromski’s office, dropped 50 pounds of camera equipment onto the floor and said with tears in her eyes, “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Zoromski’s answer: “I know you can.”
Stobb, a media studies graduate student, had the honor of introducing Zoromski at the 2015 Milwaukee Press Club Media Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
“Mark is the first educator to say he believes in me. He’s the only educator to say he is proud of me,” Stobb told the audience.
In 1998, Zoromski joined the Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies faculty at UWM after 18 years in television news. He immediately founded PantherVision, a weekly television newscast led entirely by students in his television reporting and producing classes. Now entering its seventeenth year, PantherVision has won more than 250 national, state and local awards including a regional Emmy. In 2014, PantherVision became the first collegiate news team to win a professional Edward R. Murrow Award.
“That is the pride I get to feel every single day from my students,” Zoromski said. “It is an absolute privilege to be their teacher. They are the reason I was given this incredible honor.”
The Milwaukee Press Club is the oldest continuously operating press club in North America. The Media Hall of Fame was established in 1980 to honor the men and women who shaped journalism in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.
