Two recent alums of The Daily Texan will be honored as Rising Stars at the March 22 Friends of the Daily Texan Hall of Fame gathering on the UT campus.

The Rising Star Award, which is given to recent graduates who have already made a significant contribution in their field, will be given to Ellie Breed, Chief Press Officer at the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and Eleanor Dearman, a Texas politics and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In addition, nine honorees will be named to The Daily Texan Hall of Fame at the 11th annual gathering of Friends of The Daily Texan.

The Friends group is a nonprofit organization that supports The Daily Texan in a variety of ways, including financial support, scholarships for students, covering costs of the Texan’s underlying website structure and in other ways as requested.

Registration for the event or to sponsor a Texan staffer attendance is here.

Dr. Rachel Davis Mersey, Dean of Moody College of Communication, will be the featured speaker at the event.

The evening begins at 5 p.m. with an outdoor reception on the Walter Cronkite Plaza, located between the Texas Student Media building and the Moody College of Communication complex.

There will be a variety of food and beverage stations.

Also beginning at 5 p.m. will be a tour and visitation time at the adjacent Daily Texan offices.

The reception ends at 6:45 p.m., and then moves to a nearby Moody auditorium for Dr. Mersey’s address, Hall of Fame selections and the award of scholarships to staff members.

The auditorium event will begin at 7:15 p.m. sharp, and end at 9:30 p.m.

Rising Star Honorees

Ellie Breed

Ellie Breed is Chief Press Officer at the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

She graduated in 2019 from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science, Public Relations/Image Management.

She worked at The Daily Texan for 4 years, serving as Managing Editor, Special Projects Editor, News Editor and reporter.

Previous experience includes Media Relations Coordinator at UT-Austin and handling Media Relations, Public & Government Affairs for Exxon/Mobil.

She is from Austin.

Eleanor Dearman

Elly Dearman is a Texas politics and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

She is based in Austin, covering the Legislature and its impact on North Texas.

She grew up in Denton and has a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of  Texas at Austin, graduating in 2016.

She worked on The Daily Texan as a reporter on the news and life and arts desks and as special ventures editor.

Prior to her work at the Star-Telegram, she worked at the El Paso Times, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, was a Fellow at the Dallas Morning News and was legislative reporter for Quorum Report.

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About the Friends of The Daily Texan: The Friends group was established in 2013 to assist the Texan at a particularly critical time. We provide a variety of support to the staff and to The Texan and Texas Student Media, including funding 13 scholarship grants a year for Texan staffers, funding the digital infrastructure that underlies The Daily Texan website, purchase of video and photo equipment, training and many other needs. Our current main focus is to build our endowment to both expand and insure long-term continuation of our scholarship program for staffers.