The Jack Douglas Award is the Texas APME’s highest honor, recognizing significant contributions to the organization and to Texas journalism. The award was created to honor the memory of the late associate editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The 2008 recipient of the Jack Douglas Award is Mike Cochran.
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Cochran is a former journalist for The Associated Press and senior writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He spent most of a four-decades career roving West Texas for the AP and reported many of the nation’s top stories during that time. Assignments included the JFK assassination, the trial of Jack Ruby, and coverage of the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission and the Challenger and Columbia Shuttle explosions. He has won six Headliner awards, two Stanley Walker journalism awards, the AP’s international feature writing award and was a three-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize.
Cochran is the author of Claytie, the biography of Texas rancher and political figure Clayton Williams; Texas vs. Davis, about the murder case of millionaire T. Cullen Davis; And Deliver Us From Evil, a trilogy of true-crime stories; and co-author of West Texas.
Cochran is a member of the North Texas Journalism Hall of Honor and a recipient of the 1988 Texas Christian University Ethics Award. In 2004, he was inducted into the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association Hall of Fame.