Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
The Press Club of Cleveland will recognize the 2025 Journalism Hall of Fame inductees on Dec. 3, which will include 1978 Lake High School graduate Dale Omori.
The Press Club of Cleveland’s Journalism Hall of Fame recognizes those who have made journalism matter in Cleveland and who have helped it survive.
Omori spent over three decades as a newspaper photojournalist at the Kettering-Oakwood Times, the Cincinnati Post, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. That career was followed by a stint as a producer/director at one of Cleveland’s largest marketing agencies, Adcom.
Omori’s aim, whether it was shooting photos for a story about the plight of Cleveland’s poor or making a personal film about his family’s love of Spam, was to open a window to another world for readers and viewers. This goal never changed even when his career evolved with the digital age.
“It’s quite a surprise, and I’m flattered,” Omori said. “It’s nice to be recognized by your peers, especially since it’s for a lifetime of work. It’s nice to be recognized and appreciated. It was quite a surprise because I haven’t been in the news business for over 15 years.”
Following his time with Adcom, Omori began his own business, Omori Media, before retiring in 2024.
“I was always interested in fine art, so I do some art pieces here and there,” he said. “I still do photography. I still love photography. I shoot a lot of nature photography. I just do it for fun now.”
After graduating from Lake, Omori went on to complete his degree in photojournalism from Bowling Green State University. Since then, he covered news and sports for the newspapers he worked at, and he has photographed everything from nursing midwives to hospice care for the indigent. He even traveled to Ethiopia to film and photograph the expedition of a paleoanthropologist searching for the origins of man.
Omori’s work both in editorial and advertising has been recognized with two regional Emmy Awards, an Addy Award by the American Advertising Association, a Golden Eye Award from the World Press Photo Foundation, and recognition from the Pictures of the Year competition for multimedia as well as photography, which was sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) and the University of Missouri.
Additionally, Omori been an NPPA Region 4 Photographer of the Year and was named the photographer of the year by the Ohio News Photographer’s Association in 1989 and 2003. His independent short films have screened and won awards at the Cleveland International Film Festival and most recently at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival.
Omori said the NPPA and World Press are big organizations.
“(The NPPA Pictures of the Year competition) is a big contest,” Omori said. “That was the contest in the states. The World Press is the contest for international documentary photography.”
Omori will be inducted into the hall of fame on Dec. 3 at Edwins, which is located in Cleveland Heights.
