Today would have been Terez Paylor's 38th birthday. Last night, I had a chance to connect with Terez's fiancee, Ebony Reed, and Joel Lorenzi, the recipient of the first PowerMizzou Journalism Alumni Scholarship which was renamed last year to honor Terez following his death. I recorded a couple minutes of the conversation and wanted to post it here:
We started the scholarship in June of 2020 and it's already at more than $61,000. The J-School has raised the goal three times already. Our new goal for this year is $85,000. I didn't know Ebony while Terez was alive but have gotten to know her since he passed away on February 10 last year. The first conversation I had with her was to get her permission to rename our scholarship to honor Terez. I wanted to make sure that she understood we weren't trying to leverage Terez's name in any way. We just wanted to honor our friend who had covered Mizzou. Ebony is also a graduate of the journalism school and she was a professor from 2017-2019 as well. She and Terez's family were gracious enough to agree to have the scholarship renamed in his memory. Since then, Ebony has put a ton of effort into promoting the scholarship and it's become a very important cause to her. For those who are so inclined, you can join the list of more than 100 donors here:
mizzougivedirect.missouri.edu
I also want to highlight the other scholarship in Terez's name. Yahoo and the Wall Street Journal (where Ebony worked up until very recently when she took a job as the Chief Strategy Officer with The Marshall Project), established a scholarship at Terez's alma mater, Howard University. If you would like to donate to that, click the link below, select "Other" as the designation and put Terez A Paylor Scholarship in the Notes section
giving.howard.edu
Finally, if you'd rather have something tangible that comes along with your donation, you can purchase an all-juice t-shirt or hoodie (it's legit the most comfortable hoodie I've ever owned) below. All proceeds will go to the scholarship at Howard.
breakingt.com
Our scholarship started as a small idea because I thought I just needed to do something worthwhile a couple of summers ago. Through the support of some notable J-school alums, some personal friends and now--and most notably--Ebony Reed, it has grown into something much larger than we originally thought it would be and a project that's very important to me to keep going strong. @jxlorenzi is at the Indianapolis Star right now and covered his first NBA game on Wednesday night. I was struck by the similarities between Joel and Terez. Neither one had much of a background in journalism when they started writing. Terez worked his way up the ladder into becoming a national star. As Joel said in the video, whether it's him or someone else, our goal is to lend just a small bit of assistance to the next Terez Paylor.
I know this is not the normal type of topic on this board (don't worry, I'm going to write the Chamber here relatively soon) but I've been struck this week again by the impact Terez had on so many people and getting to know Ebony has been one of the best things that has happened to me in the last year. So I wanted to highlight the two of them and take this opportunity to provide you all with a chance to do something meaningful for the school you love and to keep the memory of a great one we lost way too soon alive.
We started the scholarship in June of 2020 and it's already at more than $61,000. The J-School has raised the goal three times already. Our new goal for this year is $85,000. I didn't know Ebony while Terez was alive but have gotten to know her since he passed away on February 10 last year. The first conversation I had with her was to get her permission to rename our scholarship to honor Terez. I wanted to make sure that she understood we weren't trying to leverage Terez's name in any way. We just wanted to honor our friend who had covered Mizzou. Ebony is also a graduate of the journalism school and she was a professor from 2017-2019 as well. She and Terez's family were gracious enough to agree to have the scholarship renamed in his memory. Since then, Ebony has put a ton of effort into promoting the scholarship and it's become a very important cause to her. For those who are so inclined, you can join the list of more than 100 donors here:
Join me in supporting the PowerMizzou Journalism Alumni Scholarship
This scholarship will benefit minority students studying at the Missouri School of Journalism who plan to pursue careers in sports journalism.
I also want to highlight the other scholarship in Terez's name. Yahoo and the Wall Street Journal (where Ebony worked up until very recently when she took a job as the Chief Strategy Officer with The Marshall Project), established a scholarship at Terez's alma mater, Howard University. If you would like to donate to that, click the link below, select "Other" as the designation and put Terez A Paylor Scholarship in the Notes section
Give Now | Howard Giving
Finally, if you'd rather have something tangible that comes along with your donation, you can purchase an all-juice t-shirt or hoodie (it's legit the most comfortable hoodie I've ever owned) below. All proceeds will go to the scholarship at Howard.
Terez Paylor All-Juice Team Shirt + Hoodie - Yahoo + BreakingT
Effort. Attitude. Performance. These are the traits that make up the All-Juice Team as defined by Terez Paylor. They also defined Terez personally and the spirit of his outsized contributions in sports journalism before his unexpected passing in 2021. “Juice,” in football terms, means having the...
breakingt.com
Our scholarship started as a small idea because I thought I just needed to do something worthwhile a couple of summers ago. Through the support of some notable J-school alums, some personal friends and now--and most notably--Ebony Reed, it has grown into something much larger than we originally thought it would be and a project that's very important to me to keep going strong. @jxlorenzi is at the Indianapolis Star right now and covered his first NBA game on Wednesday night. I was struck by the similarities between Joel and Terez. Neither one had much of a background in journalism when they started writing. Terez worked his way up the ladder into becoming a national star. As Joel said in the video, whether it's him or someone else, our goal is to lend just a small bit of assistance to the next Terez Paylor.
I know this is not the normal type of topic on this board (don't worry, I'm going to write the Chamber here relatively soon) but I've been struck this week again by the impact Terez had on so many people and getting to know Ebony has been one of the best things that has happened to me in the last year. So I wanted to highlight the two of them and take this opportunity to provide you all with a chance to do something meaningful for the school you love and to keep the memory of a great one we lost way too soon alive.
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