Media Hall of Fame - Steve Morse

Steve Morse (posthumous), 1976, Journalism: Steve was a newsroom leader in multiple newspapers in Michigan, Florida, and Kentucky throughout a career that spanned more than 40 years. Steve spent the first 18 years of his career at the Battle Creek Enquirer, where he started as a sports writer before being promoted to sports editor. He went on to become the Enquirer’s news editor, metro editor and special sections/project editor. From there, Morse joined the Booth Newspapers organization, serving as an assistant metro editor of the Ann Arbor News for two years and then metro editor at the Jackson Citizen Patriot for more than six years, leading an award-winning staff of ten reporters and two assistant editors. In 2005, Morse relocated to Florida, joining the Tampa Bay Times, where he served as chief copy editor and as bureau editor in Clearwater, overseeing a team of six reporters. Morse later had other roles as a copy editor and page designer at The Lakeland Ledger and the Tampa Bay Tribune before moving to Louisville, Kentucky to be a page editor for multiple Gannett newspapers until his death in 2020. At CMU, Morse was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and a student leader at Central Michigan Life, serving as the student newspaper’s managing editor during his junior year and editor-in-chief during his senior year.

“Steve was a versatile and talented journalist. Sports reporting was his first love, but he adapted to the needs of the business, working on the news side, writing, editing, and designing pages. He could do it all and do it all well,” said Rick Fitzgerald, ‘75, a classmate and fraternity brother of Morse’s at CMU.