Former American Press Managing Editor Bobby Dower was honored Thursday as the fifth recipient of the Hector San Miguel Memorial Award for his years of work in the sports and news departments.

The award was created in honor of San Miguel, a longtime American Press reporter and editor who died in 2009 of complications from leukemia.

Dower’s career at the American Press began in 1971 and spanned more than four decades. He became sports editor in 1976 and was named the newspaper’s managing editor in 1996.

Dower died July 9 after battling stomach cancer. His wife, Ann Tobola, accepted the award during the luncheon held at L’Auberge Casino Resort. During their time together, she said many people who knew Dower would tell her what a good man he was.

“That is how Bobby lived his life,” Tobola said. “He lived it with grace, and he lived it with integrity.”

Former American Press Executive Editor Brett Downer said Dower was a “happy warrior” in journalism who “respected truth, respected accuracy and respected his readers.” Dower’s role as the newspaper’s managing editor included acting as chairman of the editorial board. He said his editorials “explained the problem, often acknowledged an opposing argument, and then offered a solution to the problem.”

Molly Moore, a former Washington Post reporter, was the event’s keynote speaker. Moore began working at the Washington Post in 1981 and was the foreign correspondent for more than a dozen years, reporting in India, Mexico, Istanbul and Jerusalem.

Moore began her career in journalism at the American Press when she was 15 and a student at Barbe High School. Over the years, she covered the state Legislature and wrote about some of Louisiana’s well-known politicians.

“For a journalist, Louisiana has always been so rich in characters and stories that the truth was always more fascinating and entertaining than fiction could ever be,” Moore said.

Moore was the first woman to serve as a war correspondent for the Washington Post, covering the first Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Six months later, she received a fax from the commanding general of the Marine Corps asking her to join them and report on the war. She accepted and later wrote a book about the experience titled, “A Woman at War.”

After covering the war, she became the newspaper’s foreign correspondent. She and her husband, John Anderson, adopted their son while the two were reporting in Mexico.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, Moore said she went to Pakistan. She later travelled to Jerusalem and covered dozens of suicide bombings, arriving many times before emergency or law enforcement.

Moore said she tried to “humanize this violence” so readers would not become desensitized by the frequency of suicide bombings. One victim of a suicide bomber at a coffee shop was the head of an emergency room at one of the largest hospitals in Jerusalem. His daughter, who was set to get married the next day, also died in the attack.

“My greatest fear as a journalist was that people would get numb to all this violence,” she said.

Moore spoke about the changing landscape of journalism, saying that newspapers today have fewer foreign bureaus because they are too expensive to maintain.

Still, she said every place “is tied to world events,” including Lake Charles, with the announcement of numerous high-dollar industrial expansion projects.

“Can we afford to abandon coverage of the rest of the world?” Moore asked. “I don’t think so.”

Moore said the danger with an increasing online presence is that too much information can overwhelm the reader without informing them. While social media is information, journalism is “what you do with it,” she said.

“I think it’s this new generation that is going to reinvent journalism,” Moore said.

American Press staff writer Lance Traweek was also recognized as the recipient of the annual professional conference award. The Hector San Miguel Memorial Fund will reimburse Traweek for his expenses to attend the 2015 Society of Professional Journalists Conference.(Donna Price/American Press)

Donna Price