School paper at Hefner’s alma mater says it hasn’t received promised grant.
Almost two years ago, Hugh Hefner promised to keep sending money to the Steinmetz Star, the Chicago high school student newspaper where he was a reporter and cartoonist in the early 1940s.
Despite sending emails, letters and making phone calls, the staff at Steinmetz College Prep’s newspaper are still waiting for the money — about $ 7,500 a year — from the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation.
“We expect it to come — we just haven’t gotten it yet,” said Sharon Schmidt, the newspaper adviser. Hefner “has been an amazing friend of Steinmetz, not just to the paper, but in other ways.”
The foundation did not respond Thursday to a request for comment. Hefner, 91, died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home.
Hefner began contributing to the student paper in 2010, after a visit to the school where his journalism career began. With the foundation’s money, the newspaper has been able to print in full- color for the last six years, Schmidt said.
Hefner has also donated computers, cameras, photo copiers and scanners.
In February 2016, the foundation’s executive director, Amanda Warren, sent the high school a letter with a pledge of five years’ continued funding. Since then, Schmidt said she’s sent emails, letters and made phone calls to the foundation but hasn’t heard whether the money will continue.
Schmidt said she’s not particularly worried.
“Because of [ Hefner’s] donations, we grew our journalism program and the strength of our publication,” she said. “So if we no longer have the money from the Hefner Foundation, the people in this school will want to continue funding the paper with local money because they’ve seen what we can do with professional printing.”