Katherine Hatton to be honored with Benjamin Franklin Award at 2005 Government Affairs Conference. 

Attorney and media law expert Katherine Hatton has been selected as the 2004 recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Award of Excellence from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. Hatton will be presented with the award during the Feb. 1, 2005 Government Affairs Conference luncheon at The Harrisburg Hilton and Towers.

The Benjamin Franklin Award of Excellence was instituted in 1998 to recognize an individual who, over the course of the past year or two, has performed an outstanding service or accomplishment to benefit the newspaper industry. 

Hatton spent 12 years as the vice president and general counsel of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. She represented the company in First Amendment and libel issues, as well as provided legal counsel to journalists on a daily basis. Prior to joining the newspaper company, Hatton practiced media law at the law firm formerly known as Kohn, Klein, Nast & Graf in Philadelphia. During the 1970s, Hatton was a reporter and later a columnist with The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer newspaper, while she pursued her legal education.

In September, Hatton left Philadelphia Newspapers to become vice president and general counsel of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, N.J. The foundation is one of the nation’s foremost foundations whose mission focuses on health care, contributing $400 million annually to programs supporting health-related issues. 

Hatton served on the board of directors for the Pennsylvania First Amendment Coalition and is the former chair of Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. She and her husband, newspaper publisher Richard Billotti, reside in Pennington, N.J.