Monroe native recognized for journalism excellence

Karene Witcher is a Monroe native who still has family in the local area. Her cousin, Lisa Anderson, shared that Witcher recently received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism at a banquet on the University of Missouri Campus.

Witcher, a 1977 graduate of the University of Missouri, is a former deputy Asia editor of The New York Times and news editor of the International Edition of the New York Times in Hong Kong.

“She began her career in Hong Kong as an intern from the Missouri School of Journalism at the then newly founded Asian edition of The Wall Street Journal. She went on to spend more than three decades with The Wall Street Journal as a foreign correspondent and senior editor working in Asia, the U.S., Latin America and Australia covering a diverse range of topics, including international banking and the Latin American debt crisis, for which she was nominated as part of a team for the Pulitzer Prize,” University officials shared in naming Witcher as one of the seven individuals who received the Missouri Honor Medal on Oct. 16, 2018 for Distinguished Service in Journalism. “Medalists are selected by the faculty of the School on the basis of lifetime or superior achievement in journalism. The Missouri School of Journalism has awarded the Missouri Honor Medal annually since 1930 to outstanding journalists, advertising and public relations practitioners, business people, institutions and media organizations from around the world.”