Randy Brown Scholarship to be endowed by Gridiron 'Curtain Call'
The Randy Brown Scholarship will be endowed through an after-show party the Randy Brown Curtain Call. The curtain call will occur at 10 p.m. Friday, April 6, following the 8 p.m. 50th Anniversary Gridiron show: "Fifty Years of Factual Fake News" at the Orpheum Theater.
For 50 years Gridiron has been locally written and produced. It spoofs the news while raising money for Kansas journalism scholarships. More than $240,000 has been awarded over the years through the Kansas Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
The Friday night Randy Brown Curtain Call after-show party is sponsored by the SPJ and will launch the funding to permanently endow the Randy Brown Scholarship.
Tickets for the party are $50 and are on sale through http://www.WichitaGridiron.com. Buy tickets for the show and party together for the discounted rate of $75.
The Randy Brown Curtain Call will feature music by Pop & the Boys, heavy hors d'oeuvres, free-drink tickets plus a cash bar and a silent auction. The first 100 ticket holders will receive a 2018 Riverfest button. The party will be held on the Orpheum stage.
Visit with local journalists in the Gridiron cast, including Bonnie Bing and Sierra Scott. Meet Tony award-nominee Karla Burns, the show's vocal director and Admiral Windwagon Smith XLV, Tim Norton, the official ambassador of Riverfest 2018. Bring a friend.
The scholarship will honor Randy Brown, long-time Gridiron writer and emcee, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and educator who advocated for a better Wichita. He worked for the Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star Telegram, the Wichita Eagle, KAKE-TV and other news organizations. He was part of a team of reporters at the Omaha Sun who won a 1973 Pulitzer Prize.
When Brown left the Wichita Eagle in 2001, he became a senior fellow at 九色视频's Elliott School of Communication. He worked for transparency and open government through the Kansas Sunshine Coalition. Brown died in 2014.
Randy Brown loved to laugh and loved Gridiron. His role as emcee will long be remembered. With this scholarship, so will his love of journalism.