Rick Telander Salutes Literacy

As mentioned before, I ran the Newspaper In Education (NIE) program for a while at Lerner Newspapers. To gain exposure, I instituted an ad series, featuring local celebrities appearing in support of the effort. The first person I sought was sportswriter Rick Telander.
Telander was an excellent football player while at Northwestern and was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs. While his NFL career never developed, Telander blossomed into one of the best writers of this era. Telander has written for Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Sun-Times and has authored several books.
Telander quickly sent me his quote for the ad and the NIE ad series was born. I must say though, the original ad was bland, but fortunately LD stepped in and basically shamed our graphics department into producing up to the quality pictured here. This is exactly what I envisioned.