May 13, 2008
"Making this
magazine reach its highest potential is our goal day in and day out.
Readable, reliable, useful, and inspiring.Louisa McCune-Elmore is editor in chief of Oklahoma Today. Before joining the magazine in November 1997, she was a contributing editor for The American Benefactor. She has also worked at Worth, George, Harper’s Magazine, Mirabella, and New York. In 1996, she was assistant editor on Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, written by Harper’s Magazine contributor Gene Lyons. A former contributing editor to Green: The Magazine for Personal Finance, her articles also have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel, Reader’s Digest, Worth, OKC Business, and World Literature Today.
In November 2003, McCune-Elmore received the Bill Thurman Memorial Media in the Arts Award at the Governor’s Arts Award. In September 1999, she was named one of "Thirty Under 30" leading the publishing world today by the Magazine Publishers of America and Folio. In September 2002, she was named one of "Forty Under 40" Oklahoma City leaders by OKC Business. In 2007, she was named to the Journal Record's list of Achievers Under 40, Class IV. She is a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors and serves on the board of the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers and Wilson Arts Inc. Formerly on the board of the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and Museum, McCune-Elmore is currently a committee member for the biennial Creativity in Motion event and its Thatcher Hoffman Smith Prize and the Oklahoma Creativity Project.
Under her guidance, Oklahoma Today has won dozens of national and state awards, including the 2005 Magazine of the Year from the International Regional Magazine Association (circulation 40,000 and under) and the 2005 San Francisco Honorary Publications Award for Best Fiction ("Mister Bob"). The magazine has received dozens of IRMA awards under her leadership, including Gold for Special Issue in 2001, 2000, and 1999 and runner-up for Magazine of the Year in 1999. The magazine also was the recipient of the prestigious Wilbur Award, given by the Religion Communicators Council, the 1999 Editorial Excellence Folio: award in the regional category, and Folio’s 1998 silver "Ozzie" for Best Supplement or One-shot. (See Awards Supplement.)
McCune-Elmore regularly judges state and national editorial and design competitions, including the annual New York Women’s Front Page Awards (since 2001), the Oklahoma Book Awards (since 1999), and the National Magazine Awards (2007 and 2008). A regular panelist at the annual IRMA conference and statewide creativity and journalism events, she also is a regular guest lecturer at the University of Central Oklahoma and University of Oklahoma journalism schools.
Born and raised in Enid, Oklahoma, McCune-Elmore graduated from San Francisco State University in 1992. From September 1992 to April 1993, she worked for Evergreen Helicopters in West Africa on a project to eradicate river blindness, and from January 1994 to April 1995, she worked at the Enid News & Eagle as a general assignment feature writer. In 1994-95, she co-created Newsmakers: Live with the Editor, a television talk show produced by the Enid New & Eagle. A Renaissance Weekend and Oklahoma Symposium participant, she is the magazine’s spokesperson and has appeared on CNNfn, OETA’s Writing Out Loud, Flashpoint, Read All About It, Mayor’s Magazine, and several other state and local programs and newscasts.