UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 21, Page 1
February 23, 1995
Allen H. Neuharth to address Class of 1995

     Allen H. Neuharth, founder of USA Today, will deliver the
University of Delaware Commencement address in Delaware Stadium on
Saturday, May 27, before members of the University's graduating Class
of 1995 and their families and friends.
     "We are very pleased that Allen Neuharth has accepted our
invitation to speak," Robert R. Davis, director of alumni and
University relations, said, in making the announcement. "Mr. Neuharth
was listed in the list of potential candidates that appeared in The
Review and was among the names selected most frequently from that list
by students.
     "Mr. Neuharth is a newsman and a newsmaker," Davis said. "He
helped change the way information is disseminated nationally with the
advent of USA Today. He is also an excellent speaker and speaks about
important issues."
     Neuharth built the nation's largest newspaper company and started
the nation's most widely read newspaper. He is a nationally known best-
selling author, a nationally and internationally distributed
columnist, a worldwide speaker and reporter, a frequent television and
radio talk show guest, the former chairman and CEO of Gannett Co. Inc.
and currently chairman of the Freedom Forum, one of the nation's
largest private foundations with assets of about $700 million.
     Neuharth is the author of seven books. His autobiography,
Confessions of an S.O.B., had a long run on The New York Times and
other best-seller lists. It has been translated into five foreign
languages.
     Named the most influential person in print media for the decade
of the 1980s by Washington Journalism Review, he writes a weekly
column, called "Plain Talk," for the domestic and international
editions of USA Today and other Gannett newspapers.
     While Neuharth was chairman or president of Gannett, the
company's annual revenues increased from $200 million to $3.1 billion
annually, enjoying 21 years-85 consecutive quarters-of uninterrupted
earnings gains.
     As chairman of the Freedom Forum, he oversees a foundation that
disperses more than $30 million in operating programs and grants
annually in the areas of free press, free speech and free spirit.
     Additionally, Neuharth is national honorary chair of the Mount
Rushmore Memorial Society's Golden Anniversary campaign and serves on
the board of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.
     His interest in newspapers dates back to age 11, when he took his
first job as a newspaper carrier in his native South Dakota. Later, as
a youth, he worked in the composing room of the weekly Alpena (S.D.)
Journal.  After graduating from Alpena High School, he served as a
combat infantryman in World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star.
After the war, he attended the University of South Dakota, where he
majored in journalism. When he graduated, he joined the Associated
Press in Sioux Falls, S.D., as a reporter.
     Neuharth and a friend launched a statewide weekly tabloid called
SoDak Sports, which failed financially. Broke and in debt, he got a
job as a reporter on the Miami Herald. There, he worked up from
reporter through many editorial positions to assistant managing
editor. In 1960, he was named assistant executive editor of the
Detroit Free Press. Both newspapers are members of the Knight-Ridder
newspaper group.
     Neuharth joined Gannett as general manager for two Rochester,
N.Y., newspapers in 1963. In 1966, he assumed the added role of
president of Gannett Florida and started a new newspaper, TODAY, later
named FLORIDA TODAY. He became Gannett president and chief operating
officer in 1970; president and chief executive in 1973 and chairman,
president and chief executive in 1979.
     Neuharth has been chairman and president of the Newspaper
Association of America. He has received many awards in the profit and
nonprofit sectors, including the Horatio Alger Award in 1975. He was
the first male from the newspaper industry to win the highest award of
Women in Communications, the Headliner.
                                                          -Beth Thomas