BUSINESS - PULITZER PRIZE WINNING JOURNALIST JIM MURRAY HONORED + his FOUNDATION SUPPORTED

The Los Angeles Dodgers paid tribute to Pulitzer Award winning journalist Jim Murray on their scoreboard - (Photo courtesy of the Jim Murray Foundation)

Los Angeles businessman Steve Soboroff Steve Soboroff with Jim Murray's typewriter and glasses - (Photo courtesy of the Jim Murray Foundation)

The Los Angeles Dodgers paid tribute to the late, great, Los Angeles Times sportswriter, Jim Murray remembering the 15th anniversary of Murray's passing in August of 1998 - Los Angeles businessman Steve Soboroff announced his personal commitment to fund a $25,000 Five-for-Five Patron grant to support the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation

Los Angeles, CA. USA -- (BUSINESS WIRE)

Sunday, November 03, 2013

Due to what we believe is the interference of the NSA and Yahoo this story fell through the cracks however it is a story that must be told. When we wrote the first edition of the NBA's all time greatest players we noted that decisions currently are being made by young journalists who weren't born when some of the greatest players for eternity thus they have a narrow opinion due their lack of experience. Murray was a journalist who had been there and done that. He saw all of the greatest we listed and was the most competent to judge.

Jim Murray was a hard nose true journalist that was about doing the work and not being involved in what has become a celebrity driven journalistic ego business. Murray's wife at his death Linda has taken up the cause to establish a foundation in his honor to assist journalists with scholarship funding. That is the thrust of the following press releases.

On August 28, the Los Angeles Dodgers will paid tribute to the late, great, Los Angeles Times sportswriter, Jim Murray remembering the 15th anniversary of Murray's passing in August of 1998. Murray's widow, Linda (Murray) Hofmans, will throw out the first pitch.

On a late Sunday evening in August of 1998, Jim Murray returned home from covering the races at Del Mar Racetrack. The previous day he had penned a story about a horse called "Free House" and a jockey named Chris McCarron who won the $1-million Pacific Classic and it ran in the LA Times that morning. That column would be the last thing Murray would write after a long and storied career of nearly four decades with the Los Angeles Times.

Before joining the LA Times in February 1961, Murray helped launch a fledgling magazine called Sports Illustrated and covered Hollywood for Time Magazine. Murray was honored in 1988 with a plaque in Cooperstown's Baseball Hall of Fame and received a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1990. Jim passed just before midnight on August 16, 1998 of a ruptured aorta. Linda was by his side at the end. Murray was 78.

In September of 1998 a public memorial was held at Dodger Stadium for Murray. Thousands of faithful readers filled the stands to hear Vin Scully, Chick Hearn, Jerry West, Ann Meyers Drysdale, Chris McCarron, Al Davis and Al Michaels pay tribute to one of their fallen idols.

"I'm honored and thrilled to be asked to throw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium. Fifteen years ago we gathered there to give Jim's fans a public memorial and now we can honor Jim again at a place where he spent so many years of his career," said Linda (Murray) Hofmans.

Murray is remembered every year through the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation's (JMMF) scholarship program that awards five $5,000 scholarships to university journalism students. Winners, known as Murray Scholars, are selected through an essay competition where the applicants are asked to write a column in the style of Jim Murray. To date, the JMMF has awarded 83 scholarships totaling over $400,000.

Ggrant to support the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation journalism scholarship program

Los Angeles businessman Steve Soboroff announced his personal commitment to fund a $25,000 Five-for-Five Patron grant to support the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation journalism scholarship program for years 2013-2017.

This year's $5,000 grant will go immediately and entirely to a 2013 Murray Scholar, a journalism student chosen from the current field of essayists. A Murray Scholar shows by academic excellence, with emphasis in writing, qualities that promise to perpetuate the Jim Murray spirit of journalistic integrity and creativity.

"Steve Soboroff's personal support of the JMMF over the past 15 years is appreciated beyond measure," said JMMF CEO & Founder, Linda (McCoy-Murray) Hofmans, widow of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist at the Los Angeles Times. "The JMMF awarded Steve its Great Ambassador Award in 2006 for his outstanding efforts and contributions to the JMMF, the Murray Scholars, and sport journalism."

In June 2005, Soboroff acquired Jim Murray's 1946 Remington cast-iron typewriter on the auction block at Sotheby's NYC. Seized by an urge to own the machine, Soboroff explained, "I loved Jim Murray!" "I'd like sports writers of yesterday, today, and tomorrow to be able to do a column or add a sentence to a memorial book. Celebrating the excellence of Jim Murray and giving kids an opportunity to try and be the next Jim Murray is why this machine is bigger than it looks," says Soboroff.

His typewriter collection now includes 22 notable machines, including those once tapped on by Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, George Bernard Shaw, John Lennon, Andy Rooney and Ray Bradbury. His latest addition to the typewriter collection is a Perkins Brailler that was used by Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, blinded at age 12.

In September of 2011 Soboroff was appointed by the California Science Center to be the Senior Advisor to the museum in its project with NASA to bring, and permanently exhibit, the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the CSC. He is Chairman of the Maccabiah Games Committee of 18, and Chairperson of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. He is also a Senior Fellow and member of the Advisory Board at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, and a member of the Board of Councillors at the USC Price School of Public Policy, and is currently Chair of the Weingart Foundation and President of the Los Angeles Police Commission.

Soboroff served as Senior Advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan (July 1, 1993 - July 1, 2001). From 1995-2000, he was President of the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Commission. He holds Bachelor and Master's Degrees from the Dept. of Finance, Insurance and Real Estate at the University of Arizona.

The JMMF raises funds throughout the year, which are then distributed to undergraduate journalism students through a nationwide essay competition coordinated by the JMMF. Scholarship winners are decided by a panel of nationally known journalists. Thirty colleges and universities currently participate in the essay competition. As of 2013, over $450,000 has been awarded to 88 "Murray Scholars".

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