Griffin Singer

A celebration of life is set for May 29 in Austin at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home, 5416 Parkcrest Drive. Visitation with family will start at 10 a.m., followed by a service at 11 o’clock and reception at noon. In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to:

· The Friends of the Daily Texan Griff Singer Fund;

· The S. Griffin Singer Endowed Professorship; or

· The S. Griffin Singer Student Support Endowment.

Griff is survived by daughter Cathy Becker and her husband Clay, son Mark Singer and his wife Tricia, and stepson Michael Selby and his wife Kathryn. He also leaves behind granddaughters Siena Singer, Brynn Selby and Paige Diehl, along with his extended family and vast network of friends, and former colleagues and students. Griff was preceded in death by wives Patricia McGuire Singer and Evelyn Carleton Singer.

Griff was born September 27, 1932, at Dallas Methodist Hospital, the son of Martha Janette Griffin Singer and Sidney Arthur Singer. He lived in the same Oak Cliff house all his life until enrolling at the University of Texas at Austin in 1952. He graduated from Sunset High School, where he was elected to the National Honor Society and lettered in football. His interest in journalism started while at Sunset as sports editor of the student newspaper.

Over the past 70-plus years, Griff had been a printer, reporter, editor, teacher and newspaper consultant. And even though he retired in 2003 after 34 years of working, he stayed active in journalism until his death. He earned Bachelor of Journalism and Master of Arts in Communication degrees, both from UT Austin.

In his teaching career, all at UT, Griff taught courses in reporting, copyediting, and newspaper layout and design. He made the transition from hot type to computers to digital during that time, and organized and team-taught the first offering of computer-assisted reporting and later sports reporting. While an undergraduate student at UT, he was a reporter and editor for The Daily Texan by day and printer in the composing room at night.

His first journalism job after serving his Army Reserve commitment as a Military Police second lieutenant was news editor at the Arlington (Texas) Citizen-Journal. After office basic training at Fort Gordon, Georgia, Griff was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. But a long-time goal was to work for his hometown paper, The Dallas Morning News. He was offered a job as a general assignment reporter at The News in 1959. His assignments grew into covering county government and civil and criminal courts, and in early 1961 he was named an assistant city editor. Among his career highlights were helping direct coverage of the assassination of President John Kennedy and the ensuing investigation and the trial of Jack Ruby for the slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin.

Griff stayed with The News until 1967, when he returned to UT and Austin to teach in the School of Journalism and Media. With the retirement of Norris Davis as chair of the school in 1976, he served a year as acting chair. Griff then served as assistant chair to the late Dwight Teeter for two years. In 1979, he was recruited to be city editor and later assistant managing editor at the San Antonio Light. He returned to UT in 1981, and continued teaching and performing administrative duties in the School of Journalism and Media.

Griff participated in countless seminars and workshops conducted for state, regional and national journalism organizations — the National and Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association, the Texas Press Association and its regional groups and the Society of Professional Journalists. He judged many state and national journalism competitions, and in 1993 was one of 13 jurors selected for the international competition of the Society of News Design. For 17 summers, beginning in 1987, he was an assistant metro editor and newsroom consultant at the Houston Chronicle.

Griff also consulted with Freedom Communications, Inc., a California-based corporation that at the time had 26 daily newspapers. In 1996, he was a copy editor on the Olympics Daily published by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution during the 1996 Summer Olympics and in 1994 was on the first team of Western journalists to go to the former Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan to work with Russian-trained journalists in adapting to a free press.

The Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association in 1998 cited Griff for his service to journalism in Texas by presenting him with the Jack Douglas Award that honors a former editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In 2003, he was awarded the title of “Wirehandler for Life,” for his many years of taking part in the annual Texas Associated Press Workshops for editors and copy editors.

Griff’s former students in 2000 honored him greatly, establishing two endowed grants to the UT School of Journalism and Media: The S. Griffin Singer Endowed Professorship and the S. Griffin Singer Student Support Endowment, which annually provides two scholarships to UT journalism students.

The South Texas Press Association in 2010 named its general excellence award The S. Griffin Singer General Excellence Award, noting his continued call for improvements in community journalism.

In 2016 he was inducted into the Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame, and two years later, he was inducted into the Friends of The Daily Texan Hall of Fame. That same year, former students, colleagues and friends established a fund creating the Griff and Evelyn Singer Foyer on the third floor of the Dealey Center for New Media on the UT campus.