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SPARKS, Nev. (AP) — The late Laura Myers, a veteran journalist and humanitarian who most recently served as the lead political reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was posthumously inducted into the Nevada Press Association's Hall of Fame on Friday.
Myers died June 19 at the age of 53, two years after she had been diagnosed with colon cancer. Her family accepted the award on her behalf during the association's annual awards banquet in Sparks.
"She lived her job. She loved her job," Myers' sister, Kathy Wiechers, said at the banquet.
Myers, a Las Vegas native, began her journalism career in 1984 as a reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal. She spent more than 17 years on and off with The Associated Press, starting in 1987 in the Reno bureau and including a stint as AP's political editor during the 2000 presidential elections.
She also worked in San Jose and San Francisco, helping with coverage of the Los Angeles riots in 1992.
When she wasn't working for AP, she traveled the world learning new languages and helping build up communities. With the Peace Corps, she learned French and taught villagers to farm fish. Several months after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, she said in her resume that she managed logistics at a refugee camp in what is now the Congo.
She spent nearly a year training journalists at Arabic and French-language newspapers in Algeria and built houses for Habitat for Humanity in Uganda and Mongolia. She traveled to China for a fellowship and studied filmmaking at New York University and acting at the Atlantic Theatre Company, volunteering for a theater company in Washington, D.C., by building sets and managing lighting.
"And this is all while being the hardest-working journalist I've ever worked with," said Sandy Johnson, president of the National Press Foundation, who was AP's Washington bureau chief at the time.
After leaving The Associated Press in 2008, Myers taught English in rural Egypt.
Johnson said she tried to coax Myers back to Washington, D.C., to a new journalism endeavor. But the University of Nevada, Reno alumna opted to become the Las Vegas Review-Journal's lead political reporter in 2010 when she covered the U.S. Senate race between Sen. Harry Reid and tea party favorite Sharron Angle and later the state's caucuses in 2012 leading up to the presidential election and the 2014 midterms dominated by Republican victories in the state.
"She was somebody whose courage and tenacity was like nothing I've seen in a journalist," said Michael Hengel, executive editor of the Review-Journal.
The newspaper gave Myers its 2014 Editor's Award for Excellence, and it recently nominated her as the Nevada Press Association Outstanding Journalist of 2015.
According to the newspaper, she is survived by her mother, Monte Myers of Sparks; a sister, Kathy Wiechers of Sparks; two brothers, Bill of Westchester, California, and Mike of Lake Elsinore, California; and several nieces and nephews.
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