Jack Marsh
Jack Marsh is vice president/diversity programs for the Freedom Forum and Diversity Institute, with offices in Washington, D.C.., Nashville, Tenn., and Vermillion, S.D.
Marsh is founding director of the American Indian Journalism Institute and is among the original organizers of the annual Native American Journalism Career Conference held every April at Crazy Horse Memorial. (www.crazyhorse.org) He is an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of South Dakota and at Belmont University in Nashville. Marsh also is executive director of the Al Neuharth Media Center at USD.
From 1998 to 2001, Marsh served as director of the Newseum’s NewsCapade with Al Neuharth, a traveling Freedom Forum exhibit that visited all 50 states and Canada to promote better understanding between the news media and the public. NewsCapade was then the largest self-contained mobile exhibit in the USA.
Prior to joining the Freedom Forum in September 1998, Marsh was executive editor of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls for nearly six years and an employee of the Gannett Co. for 27 years. He has worked as a journalist at seven daily newspapers in four states.
Marsh is a native of Niagara Falls, N.Y., where he began his journalism career as a high school correspondent for his hometown newspaper. He later obtained his bachelor’s degree in government from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where he was editor of the student newspaper.
After graduation, Marsh joined the Rochester, N.Y., Times-Union where he was a reporter and an editor for 11 years. He moved to Utica, N.Y., to become managing editor and then executive editor of the Daily Press and the Observer-Dispatch for nine years. Marsh was both publisher of the Daily Journal and president of Times Graphics, a commercial printing company in Vineland, N.J., for two years before moving to Sioux Falls in 1992.
During his time as executive editor, the Argus Leader was rated as the state’s best daily newspaper by the South Dakota Newspaper Association for six consecutive years and won the national James K. Batten Award for Excellence in Civic Journalism. SDNA honored Marsh as 2005 recipient of its Distinguished Service Award for outstanding leadership in creating and fostering journalism diversity programs. USD honored him in 2007 as recipient of the John R. Williams Award for service to American Indian students at the university.
Marsh has been a leader in local, state and national journalism associations. Marsh is past president of the New York State Associated Press Association and the South Dakota Associated Press Managing Editors Association. The Native American Journalists Association, based at the Al Neuharth Media Center 2003-2007, presented Marsh with a lifetime membership in 2004. He also is a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Associated Press Managing Editors, the National Press Club in Washington, the Society of Professional Journalists and College Media Advisers.
Marsh serves on the executive committee of the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Board of Directors. He is past president of the Sioux Falls Downtown Rotary Club.
Marsh and his wife, Betty, a school counselor, live in Sioux Falls. They have two daughters, Dr. Elizabeth Jensen, a Sioux Falls family practice physician, and Colleen Marsh, a 2004 USD theater graduate who is co-manager of a Sioux Falls retail store. The Marshes have two young grandchildren.
