Vernon Henry Gets Lifetime Award

Advanstar editorial director is second to win ASBPE Lifetime Achievement Award.

Vernon Henry passes on a few words of advice to editors as he accepts his award.

Vernon Henry of Cleveland, corporate editorial director for Advanstar Communications, received the American Society of Business Publication Editors' Lifetime Achievement Award for his 40-plus years in newspaper and business publications.

Henry accepted his award at ASBPE's national Awards of Excellence Banquet June 21 in downtown Boston. The banquet also honored ASBPE's Magazines of the Year and more than 200 other winners in 34 editorial, design, and Web categories. The banquet was held in conjunction with ASBPE's national editorial conference, June 21-22, in Newton, Mass.

During his time in the industry, Henry started up five publications and 28 show dailies and developed programs to raise editorial standards and integrity.

Henry has an impressive list of accomplishments. In 1994, he was inducted into the Kappa Tau Alpha Journalism Hall of Fame of Bowling Green State University. He has won more than 30 state and national writing and editing awards. He has been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize. He’s also developed young journalists through a mentoring program, as an adjunct professor at Akron State University, and as a member of the Kent State University School of Journalism Professional Advisory Board.

In addition to developing magazines and trade show dailies at Advanstar, where he has spent the last 17 years, Henry has initiated ongoing corporate editorial training and awards programs, and launched a corporate editorial council for developing editorial standards and an editorial audit program that helps define goals for every editorial page in a publication.

Presently, Henry is working to establish “Advanstar University,” which will train mid-level editorial staff for editorial management positions by providing guidance on management techniques, budgeting and forecasting, and magazine and Web management.

Henry campaigns “furiously for editorial quality and integrity,”said Advanstar group editorial director, Mary Slepicka. His initiatives allow editors “to remember, and then restore, the traditional goals of journalism and commitment to public service,” she said. “Today, it's more difficult than ever to be a business editor and to marry your employer's business plans with your personal and professional ethics; Vern Henry allows us to ‘rebuild our professional desktops’ to the benefit of the publication, its employees – and most importantly, its readers.”

Advanstar has 105 business and professional publications, 87 exhibitions and conferences, and 79 Web sites. Prior to working at there, Henry was executive editor for Rowley Publications' seven newspapers in Ohio. He is a past president of the Ohio UPI Editor's Association.

Henry is the second to be honored with the award, which was first given last year to Bernie Knill of Penton Media's Material Handling Engineering magazine (now Material Handling Management).

Read about last year's Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Bernie Knill.