Lifetime Achievement Award

Walklin recognized for contributions to broadcasting with lifetime achievement award

By Charlyne Berens
J Alumni News editor

Every group needs a member or two who will do the hard jobs that are not necessarily glamorous but that benefit everyone in the group. Larry Walklin is that kind of person, Randy Lube says.

Lube is a member of the board of the Associated Press Broadcasters of Nebraska. The AP Broadcasters presented Walklin the Broadcast Achievement Award for lifetime achievement on April 1. The award recognized Walklin’s outstanding contribution to television broadcasting in Nebraska.

Mike McKnight, incoming president of the AP Broadcasters board and a reporter at WOWT-TV, Omaha, says Walklin has been involved for years with Media of Nebraska and has worked with broadcasters to get cameras into courtroom. Walklin has often been the liaison between broadcasters and the courts, helping smooth out differences between the two on a variety of issues and in difficult situations.

“He’s been the voice of reason in the wilderness,” McKnight says.

Walklin has been a member of the college’s broadcasting faculty since 1967. He began working to get cameras into courtrooms in 1982 after attending a meeting at which Joe R. Seacrest, then editor of the Lincoln Journal, nominated him for the job.

“I didn’t feel I could say no,” Walklin says. He is still chair of Media of Nebraska’s Committee for Expanded Coverage of the Nebraska Supreme Court and Nebraska Court of Appeals.

Walklin points out that allowing cameras in courtrooms required a change in court rules, not a change in the law. It also required a lot of negotiating behind the scenes, he says. Overall, negotiations to open the courts to expanded media coverage have proven to be “pretty successful,” he says.

It’s exactly that kind of effort that the AP award recognizes, says Lube, news director at KOLN/KGIN-TV, Lincoln and Grand Island. Walklin takes his job seriously and goes out of his way to work behind the scenes to make things happen, Lube says.

"We need people like that. He’s taken the lead and helped us handle these issues. He does it because he believes in the profession.”

This was the second year the AP Broadcasters presented the award.Walklin recognized for contributions to broadcasting with lifetime achievement award.