Latest news with #Dugger
Fox Sports
3 days ago
- Sport
- Fox Sports
Levu's 3-run HR helps UCLA beat UC Irvine 8-5 to sweep Los Angeles Regional
Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mulivai Levu hit a three-run home run, Dean West and Payton Brennan added two RBIs apiece and UCLA jumped to a big lead and then held on to beat UC Irvine 8-5 on Sunday night and win the Los Angeles Regional. UCLA (45-16) clinched its first trip to the super regionals since 2019. UC Irvine (43-17) beat Arizona State 11-6 in a loser-out game earlier Sunday. The Anteaters made back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances for the first time since they went to six straight tourneys from 2006-11. Roman Martin's RBI single off Finnegan Wall (0-1) in the first inning made it 1-0 and the Bruins led the rest of the way. Cashel Dugger hit a single in the second that drove in Brennan, who doubled to lead off the inning, and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Roch Cholowsky to make it 3-0. Dugger and Phoenix Call drew back-to-back walks to lead off the fourth and West followed with a bunt single to load the bases. Dugger scored on another sacrifice fly by Cholowsky and, after Levu's homer, Brennan added a sacrifice fly to make it 8-0. James Castagnola and Alonso Reyes each had an RBI for the Anteaters in the fourth, Anthony Martinez hit a two-run double in the fifth and Reyes hit a lead-off home in the sixth to cap the scoring. Chris Grothues (3-1) came on in relief of starter Wylan Moss with one out and the bases loaded in the fourth. Grothues got Reyes to groundout, driving in Martinez, and struck out Blake Penso to limit the damage. Easton Hawk pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his sixth save of the season. ___ AP college sports: in this topic
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Levu's 3-run HR helps UCLA beat UC Irvine 8-5 to sweep Los Angeles Regional
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mulivai Levu hit a three-run home run, Dean West and Payton Brennan added two RBIs apiece and UCLA jumped to a big lead and then held on to beat UC Irvine 8-5 on Sunday night and win the Los Angeles Regional. UCLA (45-16) clinched its first trip to the super regionals since 2019. Advertisement UC Irvine (43-17) beat Arizona State 11-6 in a loser-out game earlier Sunday. The Anteaters made back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances for the first time since they went to six straight tourneys from 2006-11. Roman Martin's RBI single off Finnegan Wall (0-1) in the first inning made it 1-0 and the Bruins led the rest of the way. Cashel Dugger hit a single in the second that drove in Brennan, who doubled to lead off the inning, and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Roch Cholowsky to make it 3-0. Dugger and Phoenix Call drew back-to-back walks to lead off the fourth and West followed with a bunt single to load the bases. Dugger scored on another sacrifice fly by Cholowsky and, after Levu's homer, Brennan added a sacrifice fly to make it 8-0. James Castagnola and Alonso Reyes each had an RBI for the Anteaters in the fourth, Anthony Martinez hit a two-run double in the fifth and Reyes hit a lead-off home in the sixth to cap the scoring. Advertisement Chris Grothues (3-1) came on in relief of starter Wylan Moss with one out and the bases loaded in the fourth. Grothues got Reyes to groundout, driving in Martinez, and struck out Blake Penso to limit the damage. Easton Hawk pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his sixth save of the season. ___ AP college sports: The Associated Press
Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- Sport
- Winnipeg Free Press
Levu's 3-run HR helps UCLA beat UC Irvine 8-5 to sweep Los Angeles Regional
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mulivai Levu hit a three-run home run, Dean West and Payton Brennan added two RBIs apiece and UCLA jumped to a big lead and then held on to beat UC Irvine 8-5 on Sunday night and win the Los Angeles Regional. UCLA (45-16) clinched its first trip to the super regionals since 2019. UC Irvine (43-17) beat Arizona State 11-6 in a loser-out game earlier Sunday. The Anteaters made back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances for the first time since they went to six straight tourneys from 2006-11. Roman Martin's RBI single off Finnegan Wall (0-1) in the first inning made it 1-0 and the Bruins led the rest of the way. Cashel Dugger hit a single in the second that drove in Brennan, who doubled to lead off the inning, and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Roch Cholowsky to make it 3-0. Dugger and Phoenix Call drew back-to-back walks to lead off the fourth and West followed with a bunt single to load the bases. Dugger scored on another sacrifice fly by Cholowsky and, after Levu's homer, Brennan added a sacrifice fly to make it 8-0. James Castagnola and Alonso Reyes each had an RBI for the Anteaters in the fourth, Anthony Martinez hit a two-run double in the fifth and Reyes hit a lead-off home in the sixth to cap the scoring. Chris Grothues (3-1) came on in relief of starter Wylan Moss with one out and the bases loaded in the fourth. Grothues got Reyes to groundout, driving in Martinez, and struck out Blake Penso to limit the damage. Easton Hawk pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his sixth save of the season. ___ AP college sports:
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Ronnie Dugger, trailblazing founder of The Texas Observer, dies at 95
Ronnie Dugger, the founding editor of The Texas Observer once referred to as the 'godfather of progressive journalism in Texas,' died Tuesday in Austin. He was 95. His death was related to Alzheimer's disease complications, said his daughter, New York Times health and science editor Celia W. Dugger. Dugger launched the Observer in 1954, when he was just 24 and a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He wanted to create not just a newspaper, but something to serve 'the rolling, ongoing community of liberal and left, radical, some centrist and conservative, decent people, still moored in this still oligarchical political hellhole, beautiful Texas,' he wrote in the Observer in 2014, recalling the time when the publication was created. He wrote the Observer's mission statement, which is still displayed on its website today: 'We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it.' Gus Bova, the Observer's editor-in-chief, described Dugger as a 'trailblazing journalist in Texas.' 'He insisted on covering stories that, in the 1950s, the major daily papers wouldn't touch. He drove around Texas in this broken-down little old car, finding stories of KKK violence in East Texas or issues faced by Mexican Americans in San Antonio or the border,' Bova said. 'Now we see journalism like then it was really something different that he started.' The Austin-based Observer has been awarded multiple national awards in its 71-year history. The New York Times Book Review once called it 'that outpost of reason in the Southwest.' In 2023, the publication almost shut down because of funding issues, but then it crowdsourced more than $300,000 and continued its operations. Ceila Dugger said 'journalism runs in the family.' Dugger's grandson, Max Bearak, also works at The New York Times. She said she was inspired to join the profession by her father's belief in the power of the press. 'Our house was just alive with people who were in the thick of Texas politics, trying to make this a better state,' she said. 'It was impossible not to be infected as a young person by all of that.' Dugger was known for his indefatigable work ethic. In a 1974 op-ed, Dugger's former colleague, historian Lawrence Goodwyn, reflected on how Dugger stood out from other young journalists, in their early thirties at the time, who were already worn out because of the high-paced reporting in Texas politics. Goodwyn recalled a conversation with one of them who said, 'I don't know how Dugger does it.' Jim Hightower, who was the Observer's editor in the 1970s, recalled that at that time, there was barely any coverage of progressive candidates in Texas. Dugger wanted to change that. 'His integrity was not sanctimonious. It was not some stiff concept to put on a honesty and truth,' he said. 'His belief in journalism that guided my own ever since is that you tell the truth. You tell what you see, what you hear, what you smell. And do so with as much liveliness as you possibly can.' Dugger was concerned with more than just Texas politics. He wrote biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan. And he was strongly against nuclear weapons, as reflected in his first book, 'Dark Star: Hiroshima Reconsidered in the Life of Claude Eatherly of Lincoln Park, Texas.' Bova said that up through last year, he was still talking about nuclear weapon threats, democracy and journalism, and would read The New York Times every morning. Outside of journalism, Dugger was passionate about Russian literature, loved reading, and 'wrote thousands of poems that were never published,' his daughter said. On top of all the national recognition Dugger received throughout his career, Joe Holley wrote in the Observer's obituary for Dugger, 'he will always be associated with the scrappy little Austin-based political journal created in his image.' Disclosure: New York Times and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
'Hew to the truth': Ronnie Dugger, founding editor of Texas Observer, has died at age 95.
Ronnie Dugger, a titan of Texas journalism and founding editor of the Texas Observer, died this morning in Austin following a history of Alzheimer's disease. He had recently turned 95. "Ronnie was a man who towered over his colleagues in Texas journalism for decades," said Ben Sargent, retired Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist for the American-Statesman who now contributes to the Texas Observer. "His career, his passion for the Texas Observer and its mission, and his powerful and fearless body of work were always directed toward the noblest things about the American democracy, toward the good of the people, and most of all toward the truth. We can only hope that Ronnie will serve as an inspiration and example to the journalists who need to take up those causes going forward." In 1954, at a time when the conservative wing of the Democratic Party dominated politics in the state, Dugger, who had studied journalism at University of Texas before attending Oxford University, agreed to lead the progressive Texas Observer newspaper. He wrote this statement for the paper's masthead: "We will serve no group or party but will hew to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it." More: Tom Spencer, civic leader and Austin PBS talent, dies at age 68 While editor of the UT Daily Texan newspaper (1950-1951), Dugger became known to a group of leaders who organized the Texas Observer to give the state's liberals a voice. "Ronnie had been a liberal crusader during his tenure at the Daily Texan, whose public denunciations of the demagogic U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare had attracted the attention of progressive Democrats in Texas," said Don Carleton, founding director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. "He accepted their offer after they agreed to give him exclusive editorial control of the journal." As, at various times, a writer, editor and publisher at the newspaper over the course of some 40 years, Dugger attracted and guided some of the leading literary and journalistic talents of the day, including Billy Lee Brammer, Molly Ivins, Willie Morris, Kay Northcott and Jim Hightower. Among the newspaper's other distinguished staff and contributors — some of whom arrived after Dugger's tenure there, but share in the tradition he molded — were the first woman to serve as Texas Secretary of State, Minnie Fisher Cunningham; folklorist and author J. Frank Dobie; humorist and First Amendment defender John Henry Faulk; economist James K. Galbraith; writer and editor Dagoberto Gilb; investigative reporter Jake Bernstein; novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry; and photographer Alan Pogue. In his classic 1967 memoir, "North Toward Home," Morris described Dugger as "not only one of the great reporters of our time in America; more than that, he had imbued an entire group of young and inexperienced colleagues with a feel for Texas, for 'commitment' in the most human sense, and for writing." Early on, Dugger tangled with conservative Democratic Gov. Allan Shivers, who ran for office on a racist platform and supported Dwight D. Eisenhower for president. "Dugger dug his talons into Gov. Allan Shivers," journalist and author Larry L. King wrote in his book "In Search of Willie Morris." King listed other Dugger targets: "conservative state legislators, uncaring corporations, fat-cat lobbyists, the reactionary Dallas Morning News, LBJ, and any person or institution who failed his high standards of honesty and caring." Dugger took particular aim at the most powerful Texan, future President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who unsuccessfully tried to enlist the journalist as a confidant. "Lyndon Johnson loathed what Ronnie wrote about him because it was so on target," said Bill Moyers, journalist and White House Press Secretary during the LBJ administration. Dugger "constantly tried to figure him out so he could either convert him or compromise him — he failed." More: Late Lee Kelly, former Austin American-Statesman society columnist, influenced civic life During an interview conducted in the White House dining room while LBJ was president, Dugger asked bluntly: "Mr. President, you've told us in the first half-hour of a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, 400 million people will die. Now: What should a journalist like me tell the people out there about that?" "Johnson told me a joke, then got mad at me for asking the question," Dugger told the American-Statesman in 2012. "While he was cursing me for being a liberal that didn't understand the problem, Johnson says, 'I'm the one who has to mash the button. I'm the one.'" "Dugger's editorials were fearless and often deeply contrary to the political views of even his financial backers," Carleton said. "For example, his editorials attacked the federal oil depletion tax deduction that benefitted the oil and gas industry, despite the discomfort of one of his strongest supporters, wealthy oilman J. R. Parten. Other editorials strongly criticized the insurance industry, despite the critical financial backing he received from insurance company executive Bernard Rapoport. In later years, when Rapoport was asked to make a comment about Dugger, he said that Dugger's strength was 'in his total commitment' to his causes. 'A sense of outrage at injustice flows from his pen onto a piece of paper. That is his outstanding characteristic to me.'' Lou Dubose, who landed a job at the Texas Observer in the 1980s and served as political editor of the Austin Chronicle before becoming editor of the Washington Spectator, an independent political publication, admired Dugger's principles. "Ronnie was a quixotic liberal who never gave up on the ideal that by speaking truth to power, journalism could play a role in creating a just and equitable society, which seems like a quaint notion today," Dubose said. "When he hired me in 1984, he urged me to find my way into the homes of people who are left behind and ignored and write 'with Dickensian detail about the cracks in their walls and their broken lives.'" Through editorials and investigative journalism, Dugger tried mightily to improve society, but he remained unconvinced that people would end up doing the right thing. "I think there are two subjects that really ought to worry us," Dugger told the American-Statesman. "That is: The future of our own country, as citizens. And the extinction of the human race, by ourselves." Dugger was born April 16, 1930, in Chicago. In 2012, American-Statesman journalist Brad Buchholz wrote a long, admiring profile of Dugger as a "free man" at age 81. In one of the best descriptions of Dugger's independence and moral dedication, Buchholz described an incident when a 21-year-old Dugger reflected on life and its choices after his car broke down on a cold road west of Austin during the early 1950s. "While I was out there, the thought came into my mind that I was not going to do anybody else's work," Dugger told Buchholz. "I decided what I had to do with my life was sort of like the scout on Western caravans who went ahead and looked for the ambushes and big rivers, and came back and talked to the people who had to turn the wagons. "That's the way I see my life. ... It's kind of a lonely self-image. ... I tell people I'm closest to that I've always been lonely; I don't know why ... but the operative idea that night was that I'd rather disappear into total oblivion than to give my life over to anything but my own work." More: Austin WWII internment camp survivor Isamu Taniguchi built Japanese Garden in Zilker Park He married twice, first to Jean Williams and then to Patricia Blake, both deceased. He and his first wife had two children, Gary Dugger and Celia Dugger, health and science editor for The New York Times. Dugger left Texas in the 1980s after he married writer and editor Patricia Blake. He spent almost 20 years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he inspired the populist movement Alliance for Democracy. After Blake died in 2010, Dugger came back to Austin. In 2011, Dugger won recognition for his cumulative career at the annual George Polk Awards, given by Long Island University for "intrepid, bold and influential work of the reporters themselves, placing a premium on investigative work that is original, resourceful and thought-provoking." "Ronnie was an outstanding example of an important American historical type: the muckraker," the Briscoe Center's Carleton said. "Although he never held office, his political opinions and reports were widely noted, if not well acknowledged. His work has shed much-needed light on public corruption, social injustice, the critical need to protect a liberal education and economic inequality." Dugger wrote books as well as articles for national magazines, and helped found progressive nonprofits. Yet his enduring legacy was the Texas Observer. "When I visited Ronnie at his home two years ago, Ronnie's grasp of the world around him was slipping away," Dubose said. "But he was making plans to start a movement like the Alliance for Democracy, the quixotic national progressive group he cofounded in the mid-nineties. We would publish a call to action in the Observer and begin a nonviolent progressive revolution." In March 2023, the board of directors of nonprofit Texas Democracy Foundation, which owns the Observer, announced that the newspaper would close down because of financial difficulties. Yet soon after, the staff led a fundraising campaign that kept it going. "I still think of Ronnie driving to Mayflower, Texas, a year after creating the Observer in 1954," Dubose said. "A subscriber had tipped him off about the murder of a Black teenager, treated as spot news by the local media. Ronnie was a white reporter from a liberal newspaper, walking into a Jim Crow town. He worked local sources to identify the murderer, walked up to his house to question him, and then asked the local sheriff if the shooter was on his list of suspects. "That work defined what Ronnie Dugger stood for as a journalist." This is a developing story. Check back for additional material. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Observer founding editor Ronnie Dugger has died at age 95
