La. Weekly publisher to receive 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award

Renette Dejoie Hall, president and publisher of The Louisiana Weekly, will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Press Club of New Orleans on July 21 at the Jung Hotel & Residences.

Dejoie Hall is the granddaughter of Constant Charles Dejoie, the local businessman who founded the civil rights newspaper in 1925 to fight racial injustice and to inform and connect New Orleans’ African-American community.

“I take seriously the historic mission and the responsibility passed down to me from those who came before me and have committed myself to upholding the standards they put in place during the dark days of the 20th century when domestic terrorism and lynchings were commonplace,” Dejoie Hall, a graduate of Ursuline Academy and Boston College, said last week.

“The Louisiana Weekly continues to play an incredibly influential and important role in New Orleans, and Renette Dejoie-Hall is the driving force,” PCNO President Doug Mouton said. “Her passion for both New Orleans and for journalistic integrity made her a perfect choice for this honor.”

For more than 30 years, Dejoie-Hall has built on her family’s legacy.

“With the president of the United States using terms like ‘fake news,’ to undermine the media, dismantling civil and voting rights, attacking women’s reproductive rights, gutting federal agencies that serve the nation’s most vulnerable citizens and declaring war on non-white immigrants,” there is little time for the Black Press or media organizations in general to sit idly by and do nothing,” Dejoie-Hall said.

The Press Club inaugurated its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992. Presentation of this award is aimed at honoring individuals who have not only demonstrated the utmost in professionalism throughout their careers but have also made significant contributions to the community in the process.

Each year, the Press Club of New Orleans selects two members of the local journalism community upon whom they bestow lifetime achievement awards. This year’s other honoree will be local political commentator Clancy DuBos, who is the former owner of alt-weekly publication Gambit.

Past award winners include J. Michael Early (1994); Angela Hill (2001); Ashton Phelps, Jr. (2007); Norman Robinson (2012); Sally-Ann Roberts (2015); Errol Laborde (2016); and Margaret Orr (2017).

Dejoie Hall and DuBos will be honored at the 60th Annual Excellence in Journalism Awards on Saturday, July 21, at the Jung Hotel (1500 Canal Street). Tickets are available at $70 each and can be purchased online at www.pressclubawards.eventbrite.com.