Awards & Hall of Fame

From The History Makers

Nonprofit executive and television personality Billye Aaron was born on October 16, 1936 in Anderson County, Texas to Nathan Suber and Annie Mae Smith Suber. She attended Clemons School in Neches, Texas and later graduated from Lincoln High School in Dallas, Texas in 1954. In 1958, she graduated from Texas College in Tyler, Texas with her B.A. degree in English. She received a fellowship to attend Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated with her M.A. degree in 1960. Aaron continued her post-graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

Aaron taught English in the Atlanta public school system, at Spelman College, Morehouse College, South Carolina State College and Morris Brown College. In 1968, she was hired as a co-host for WSB-TV’s ‘Today in Georgia,’ becoming the first African American woman in the southeast to co-host a daily, hour-long talk show. In 1973, she married baseball legend Hank Aaron and began hosting her weekly talk show, ‘Billye,’ for WTMJ-TV. In 1980, she served as the development director for the Atlanta branch of the United Negro College Fund. Throughout her fourteen-year tenure with the organization, she co-hosted the annual telethon, ‘Lou Rawls Parade of Stars,’ co-founded the Mayor’s MASKED Ball and became the second woman in the organization to serve as vice president of the southern region. After retiring in 1994, she and her husband started the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Foundation to award scholarships to assist the education of low-income children.

A longtime member of the NAACP, Aaron chaired its premiere fundraiser, the annual Freedom Fund Dinner, for five years. She was named director emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and has been honored with numerous awards for her service, including the 2003 Martin Luther King, Jr. “Salute to Greatness” and the YWCA Woman of Achievement award.

Aaron and her husband, Hank Aaron’s children include Ceci Haydel, Aaron’s daughter from her first marriage, and Gaile, Hank, Jr., Lary and Dorinda, from Hank Aaron’s first marriage. They also have two grandchildren, Emily Jewel and Victor Aaron Haydel.

Billye Aaron was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on October 1, 2016.

Christiane Amanpour is a British-Iranian journalist who was born in London, England. She was raised in Iran until she was sent back to England when she was 11 years old to attend the Holy Cross Convent School in Buckinghamshire while her family stayed in Iran. Amanpour and her family moved to the United States when the Islamic revolution in Iran toppled the shah, forcing followers to leave the country. Amanpour graduated summa cum laude with a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1983. Afterward, she worked for an NBC affiliate in Providence, Rhode Island until she was hired as an entry-level assistant for CNN’s international news desk in Atlanta, Georgia. From there she worked her way through the ranks becoming a reporter at CNN’s New York bureau before becoming the network’s leading international correspondent. In 2010, Amanpour left CNN to become the host of ABC’s political show “This Week” but stepped down from the position at the end of 2011. She continued at ABC though as its global affairs anchor while simultaneously returning to CNN for her show Amanpour, which airs on the CNN International channel and aired for an interim on the Public Broadcasting Service. In 2018, PBS replaced the time slot with the newly created show Amanpour & Company. Amanpour has reported on the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s trial, and has secured a number of exclusive interviews with global power players. Her work has earned her nine News and Documentary Emmys, four George Foster Peabody Awards, an inaugural Television Academy Honor, three duPont-Columbia Awards, the Courage in Journalism Award, an Edward R. Murrow award, and other major journalism awards along with honorary degrees.

View Amanpour’s 2018 Hall of Fame acceptance remarks here.

Ed Baker has been publisher for 27 years of Atlanta Business Chronicle, one of the country’s largest business journals with more than 166,000 readers each week. In addition to his local responsibilities, Ed is chief strategic officer of American City Business Journals, the parent company. Ed grew up in Atlanta and is very active in the community. He serves on the boards of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, Public Broadcasting Atlanta, Junior Achievement of Georgia, Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business, Atlanta Business League Foundation, Arby’s Foundation and the Atlanta Sports Council. Prior to joining the Chronicle, Ed was a senior executive in the advertising agency business, having worked on the launch of cellular for BellSouth, The Weather Channel and the Kawasaki Jet Ski at J. Walter Thompson and D’Arcy MacManus and Masius. He was inducted into the Atlanta Advertising Club Hall of Fame in the last century. A graduate of Georgia State University, he is currently working on a Master’s degree in International Business. He was named an Outstanding Alumnus in 2004. Ed remains happily married (for 38 years) to his high school sweetheart. They have one married son, who works in advertising in Atlanta. They are expecting their first grandchild in December.

View Baker’s tribute video here.

Born in Denton, North Carolina in 1918, Furman Bisher spent most of his career as a sports columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he first served as sports editor in 1950. Over his long and storied career, he has contributed to numerous influential periodicals, including Sports Illustrated, the Sporting News, and the Saturday Evening Post. Bisher graduated in 1938 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and became the editor of the Lumberton Voice at the age of 20. In 1948, he became the sports editor of the Charlotte News. He came to Atlanta in 1950 to work for the Atlanta Constitution, and joined the Atlanta Journal and Sunday Journal-Constitution as sports editor and columnist in 1957. Bisher has helped shape sports journalism on a national scale, having served as president of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association (1974-1976) and president of the Football Writers Association of America (1959-60). In 1949, Bisher interviewed “Shoeless” Joe Jackson for Sport Magazine for the first time since the 1919 Black Sox scandal. In 1961, Time magazine named him one of the nation’s five best columnists. Bisher has authored several books, including a biography of Atlanta’s own Hank Aaron and Miracle in Atlanta (1966). Bisher has covered some of the most influential sporting events over the past half-century, including the Masters Tournament, every Kentucky Derby since 1950, and every Super Bowl but the first. He played golf with Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead, and Billy Joe Patton, who once said, “I could have handled the fame. I could have handled the money. But I doubt if I could have handled the women.” Bisher is credited with helping to bring the Braves from Milwaukee to Atlanta. He has been inducted into numerous halls of fame, including the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame, the International Golf Writers Hall of Fame, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, and the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame. He has been given the Red Smith Award for contributions to journalism, and his work has been anthologized in Best Sports Stories of the Year twenty-three times. In 1996, Bisher won the PGA Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award in 1996.

View Bisher’s tribute video here.

Born in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and raised in the Mississippi Delta, Blackmon got his start in journalism after writing a story for the Leland (Miss.) Progress, his hometown weekly, when he was just 12 years old. Blackmon first worked as a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat in 1985. He became co-owner and managing editor of the Daily Record, in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1987. From there, he went on to cover race and politics for the Atlanta Constitution, where his investigations into corruption at Atlanta City Hall helped lead to the convictions of eight people, including two former council members and ultimately former Mayor Bill Campbell. In 1995, Blackmon moved to the Wall Street Journal, where he became the longtime Atlanta bureau chief and later senior national correspondent. Blackmon led the Journal’s distinguished coverage of major national stories including the failed government response to Hurricane Katrina, the 9/11 hijackers’ Florida training, the emergence of the Tea Party, and coverage of the economy and politics of the South. In 2009, Blackmon won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. He and a team of WSJ reporters were finalists for a 2011 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. Blackmon was a member of the WSJ staff awarded a 2002 Pulitzer for breaking news coverage of the 9/11 attacks Blackmon is currently a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and executive producer and host of the nationally syndicated weekly public television program, American Forum.

View Blackmon’s tribute video here.

Valerie Boyd was the Charlayne Hunter-Gault professor of journalism at the University of Georgia, where she founded and directed the low-residency MFA Program in Narrative Nonfiction, opening doors for women and people of color and establishing a literary community that continues to flourish. The New York Times called her “an electrifying essayist and an energizing mentor.” A scholar of the Black archive, she was the author of the critically acclaimed biography “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston,” winner of the Southern Book Award and the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award. In 2017, she received the Georgia Governor’s Award in the Arts and Humanities. Formerly arts editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she wrote for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Bon Appétit, ESSENCE, and the Oxford American, among many others. At the time of her passing, she was editor-at-large at the University of Georgia Press and senior consulting editor for The Bitter Southerner. She published two books posthumously, “Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker” and “Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic.” Valerie passed away on February 12, 2022.

View Boyd’s video tribute here. 

Thomas John “Tom” Brokaw, anchor, author, correspondent, editor, and journalist, is one of the nation’s most celebrated figures in the history of broadcast journalism. After obtaining his degree in political science, Tom launched his television career at KTIV in Sioux City, Iowa. His early career also included stops at KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska, and WSB-TV in Atlanta where he served as both anchor and editor while following the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1966, Brokaw joined the NBC News team, reporting from California while he simultaneously anchored the 11 pm news for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles. Tom continued to climb ladders throughout the late sixties becoming the network’s White House correspondent in 1973 amidst the Watergate scandal. In 1976, Brokaw became the host of The Today Show; however, he is best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. As anchor, Brokaw covered the Challenger disaster, the Loma Prieta earthquake and Hurricane Andrew. His accomplishments also include conducting the first one-on-one American television interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin and moderating both the Democratic and Republican debates for president in 1987. In his 21 years of broadcast journalism, Tom Brokaw would serve in various capacities with NBC Nightly News, Dateline, Meet the Press and over 25 different documentaries. Brokaw is also known for producing many specials for NBC, including 2001’s “The Greatest Generation Speaks,” based on his best-selling book, The Greatest Generation. Brokaw stepped down from the anchor desk in 2004, but remains with NBC as a special correspondent providing analysis and exclusive coverage. Brokaw has received some of journalism’s highest honors, including 11 Emmys, the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award. Brokaw remains one of television’s most recognized and most trusted figures in broadcast journalism.

View Brokaw’s tribute video here.

Rebecca Burns has more than 20 years experience covering Atlanta. A veteran journalist and editor, she is also the author of three books on Atlanta history.

Burns served as editor-in-chief of Atlanta magazine from 2002-2009 and under her direction the magazine received dozens of local, regional, and national awards for its journalism and design excellence. She then spent several years as director of digital strategy for Emmis Publishing, working with editors and publishers on websites, blogs, and mobile applications for the company’s family of city and regional magazines, including Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Texas Monthly.

In 2011, she co-curated the Atlanta History Center exhibit “Atlanta Magazine, 1961-2011: 50 Years of the Changing City” and produced the accompanying digital media project which won the 2012 national City and Regional Magazine Association award for excellence in multi-platform storytelling.

In fall 2012, she returned to Atlanta magazine to serve as deputy editor and digital strategist, working on special projects such as the award-winning Groundbreakers community service awards. She launched and oversaw the magazine’s daily news and culture blog.

Her own writing and reporting projects focus on Southern history, civil rights, urban planning, and social and economic justice. Burns is the author of three books on Atlanta history including Burial for a King (Scribner 2011), which chronicles the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and his funeral in Atlanta.

Burns presently serves as Executive Director of The Red & Black, the independent student media organization serving the University of Georgia, and also teaches part time at UGA. She frequently speaks to school, civic, and corporate groups. She is a past instructor at Emory University.

Honored for publishing leadership by the Magazine Association of the Southeast and Women in Communications, she is a past board member of the Atlanta Press Club and former board chair of VOX Teen Communications. She holds an M.A. in Communication from Georgia State University.

Jim Cantore, The Weather Channel television network meteorologist, has been one of the nation’s most respected and renowned forecasters for more than 30 years. His ability to explain to viewers the scientific cause-and-effect of the weather transcends from meteorology to journalism.

Cantore was born in Waterbury, Connecticut and raised in White River Junction, Vermont. He graduated from Lyndon State College and joined The Weather Channel in 1986 immediately after graduating college. Cantore anchors and forecasts the nation’s weather day-to-day and helps produce documentaries on meteorology, forecasting and historic storms.

During Cantore’s career, he has reported from events such as the Olympics, NASA launches, NFL games, PGA tournaments and the Winter X Games. He also created the Fall Foliage Forecast. Cantore holds the AMS Television Seal of Approval and received the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration David S. Johnson Award in 2003. Jim was inducted into the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center Hall of Fame in February 2013, and in 2013, he was inducted into the Silver Circle of the National Television Academy of Arts & Sciences Southeast Chapter. In 2014, he was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. In 2018, Jim was presented with an honorary doctorate from Lyndon State College and was inducted into the Weather Hall of Fame at the National Weather Museum and Science Center.

Cantore covered major weather events such as Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Matthew, Irma and Dorian. It’s his work in the midst of those storms that has made him the meteorologist his viewers hate to see coming – if Cantore is in town, it means it’s time for everyone else to leave.

View Cantore’s tribute video here.

The mission statement of Turner Broadcasting’s highly regarded Trumpet Awards states that the award is meant “to inspire, educate, stimulate and enlighten human minds to the reality that success, achievement and respect are void of color and gender.” No greater embodiment of this mission could be found than The Trumpet Awards founder, president and CEO, Xernona Clayton. Throughout her incredible career, Xernona Clayton has held many different tittles: CEO, talk show host, philanthropist, founder, and civil rights activist. In 1967, Clayton began her meteoric rise as an Atlanta media icon as the south’s first African American to have her own television show. The show was a regular feature on WAGA-TV and was soon renamed “The Xernona Clayton Show.” For nearly three decades Clayton was at home with the Turner Broadcasting Company in various capacities. In 1988 Clayton was named corporate vice president for urban affairs, which made her one of the highest ranking females employed by the Turner Broadcasting Company. During her time with TBS, Clayton founded the prestigious Trumpet Awards, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2012, heralding the achievements of African Americans. Recognized as a leader in the fight for racial and civic equality, Clayton has served as a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and has worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. She worked tirelessly on the Doctor’s Committee for Implementation, which resulted in the desegregation of Atlanta hospitals and served as a pilot for other states to follow suit. In 1968, Clayton was credited by a former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan as the reason he renounced the Klan’s activities. Clayton’s persistent fight for human rights is also documented in her 1991 autobiography, “I’ve Been Marching All the Time.” Clayton has received numerous accolades and national recognition for her contributions to the broadcasting industry. These honors include, but are not limited to, the Mickey Leland Award, the Leadership and Dedication in Civil Rights Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the Outstanding Corporate Professional Award. She was also awarded an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters Degree from Tennessee State University. In addition to these awards, the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists annually presents the Xernona Clayton Scholarship to a student pursuing a career in communications.

View Clayton’s tribute video here.

Cox Enterprises was founded in Dayton, Ohio, in 1898 by former schoolteacher and news reporter James M. Cox, whose ambition was to own a newspaper. At the age of 28, he borrowed $26,000 from friends and family and purchased the Dayton Evening News (now the Dayton Daily News). His success with the newspaper led him into public service. He subsequently became Ohio’s first three-term governor and the 1920 Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Cox Enterprises’ media legacy in Atlanta began in 1939 when he acquired the Atlanta Georgian, the Atlanta Journal and the WSB AM radio station. He was also a pioneer in television – putting WSB-TV, the South’s first television station, on the air in 1948. In the same year, he introduced FM radio to the South. His daughters, Anne Cox Chambers and Barbara Cox, have played integral roles in the company. In 1974, Anne became chairwoman of Atlanta Newspapers, and Barbara became chairwoman of Dayton Newspapers. Anne and Barbara were often complimented for their ability to remain active in their ownership without dictating the newspaper’s point of view. Anne remains the chair of Atlanta Newspapers and serves as a Director of Cox Enterprises. She has also served as ambassador to Belgium for U.S. President Jimmy Carter, director of the board of The Coca-Cola Company, and she was the first woman in Atlanta to serve as bank director for Fulton National Bank. Anne was also the first woman appointed to the board of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Anne has been a significant contributor to the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the Atlanta Historical Society, and the High Museum of Art. In 2005, the High Museum of Art named one of the wings of its expanded facility after Anne in honor of her lifetime of support. Barbara also served as director of Cox Enterprises and helped found La Pietra Hawaii School for Girls where she served as its chair from 1978 until her death in 2007. Well known in Hawaii for her support of philanthropic causes, she also made contributions to the Veterinary School of the Colorado State University endowing two chairs in equine health. Headquartered in Atlanta, Cox Enterprises is a leading communications, media and automotive services company. With revenues of nearly $15 billion and more than 50,000 employees, the company’s major operating subsidiaries include Cox Communications, Manheim, Cox Media Group and AutoTrader Group. In Atlanta, Cox’s properties include: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mundo Hispánico, Padres & Hijos, WSB-TV Channel 2, WSB-750 AM/FM, Kiss 104.1, B98.5 FM, 97.1 The River, Kudzu.com and Valpak.

View the Cox family’s tribute video here.

Amanda Davis, who was born in San Antonio, Texas, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Clark Atlanta University. She then began her career as a broadcast journalist at the former NBC affiliate in Charlotte, North Carolina, WRET. She was promoted to the station’s main anchor after four years. Later, Davis moved to Washington, D.C. to be the national correspondent for the now defunct, Satellite News Channel. In 1986, Davis made her way down to Atlanta to start her career at WAGA-TV, where she quickly became the anchor chair for the Noon news. During her time at Fox 5, Davis helped launch the highly-successful Good Day Atlanta franchise and Wednesday’s Child, which helped place foster care children in permanent homes. She is also known for interviewing Barack Obama before he took office as President and covering Coretta Scott King’s funeral. Davis won multiple Emmys from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Edward R. Murrow Award, a GABBY Award, and several awards from the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists. Davis retired from Fox 5 in 2013 following a DUI. In 2016, she opened up about her struggle with alcohol and took on a new position as morning anchor with CBS 46. In December 2017, Davis died after suffering a massive stroke while waiting for a flight at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. She is survived by her mother and daughter.

View Davis’ daughter’s 2018 acceptance remarks here.

Before landing in Georgia, Morse Diggs graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts. He then worked for the Akron Beacon-Journal in Ohio. He originally wielded a pen working at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a City Hall correspondent. It was there that Diggs was part of the team that won a UPI award for the coverage of the John Lennon/Mark Chapman stories. In 1982, Diggs left print and began his broadcast career at FOX5 News. He covers the Atlanta City Government and state politics. Diggs has two children and lives in Atlanta.

View Diggs’ 2018 acceptance remarks here.

Lino Dominguez foresaw Atlanta’s future as a capital of Latin American commerce, culture and community. He recognized that one of the many needs of Atlanta’s increasing numbers of Latin American residents was solid, dependable, hard-hitting journalistic coverage of issues critical to the diverse, local and national Spanish speaking populations.

According to the Latin American Association, in 1979, Dominguez purchased the LAA’s newsletter, Gazeta Latina, for $10 and turned it into Mundo Hispanico, now the largest Spanish-language newspaper in Georgia. The first issue under his leadership was in February 1982. Over the next 25 years, Dominguez published it himself, nurturing it and expanding it into one of the nation’s leading Spanish language newspapers.

Mundo Hispanico’s dominance and influence, under Dominguez’s leadership, attracted Cox Media Group to purchase it in 2004. The newspaper continued to expand, leading to its sale to Mundo Hispano Digital Network in 2018. According to the company, MundoHispanico.com now attracts 5 to 6 million unique visitors each month and has more than 4.5 million Facebook followers. The print weekly has a metro Atlanta circulation of 71,000 to 75,000.

View Dominguez’s tribute video here.

powerful and accomplished media figures in Atlanta and Georgia.

Dorsey was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended The Ohio State University and majored in journalism. During her summers in college, Dorsey worked for The Cincinnati Herald as a photographer and reporter. She left college to work as a reporter at WKRC-TV in Cincinnati and, in less than a year, she was hired by WSB-TV in 1973 as a reporter, assignment editor, news producer and anchor, making her the first African-American newscast anchor in Atlanta.

In 1983, Dorsey was promoted to director of editorials and public affairs, writing and sometimes broadcasting weekly editorials for the station’s general managers. She also became executive producer of the acclaimed “People 2 People” public affairs weekly program and champion of the “Family 2 Family” stationwide public service campaign.

Dorsey has won numerous awards, including seven Southeast Regional Emmys for Editorial Excellence from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She was the first African-American inducted into the NATAS Silver Circle and the first woman and African-American to receive the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Citizen of the Year Award and was recently induction into the GAB Hall of Fame. She also has been inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Region IV Hall of Fame and honored at The U.S. House of Representatives for her 45-year broadcast career.

Dorsey retired in 2018.

View Dorsey’s tribute video here.

A beloved and distinguished professor for 30 years, Conrad Charles Fink was known as a tough yet inspiring professor of journalism at the Henry W Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. His professorship followed a successful career as a foreign correspondent, international journalist and news executive for 20 years with The Associated Press. A native of Michigan, Fink served in the 1950s as a 1st lieutenant in the U.S. Marines for four years before landing his first newspaper job at the Daily Pantagraph in Bloomington, Ill. He later worked as a night editor in Chicago before moving to the Associated Press. His career as a foreign correspondent during the 1960s took him to major conflict zones in Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. Between 1967 and 1970, Fink also served in London as executive director of the AP-Dow Jones Economic Report and later as AP’s vice president of newspaper membership in New York City. He began his teaching career in 1982 at the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism at UGA where he became a teacher, both respected and revered by his students, for his ability to bring his experiences in Asia and the Soviet Union into the classroom. During his tenure with Grady College, Fink taught countless journalism students how to report the news and manage journalism businesses ethically, responsibly and profitably. A no-nonsense professor with his infamous bushy eyebrows, Fink trained students to write for and manage news companies from Amarillo, Texas, to London and Beijing. He also wrote numerous journalism textbooks on subjects ranging from editorials and sports writing to newspaper management. His publications have been translated widely and sold to journalism and media management students around the world. Fink, who held the William S. Morris Chair in Newspaper Strategy and Management at Grady College, created a unique newspaper management curriculum, developed a residence program for visiting professional journalists and spearheaded the creation of an endowed program in sports journalism. His teaching accolades included the Freedom Forum’s National Journalism Teacher of the Year Award in 2002; the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2004; the Regents Teaching Excellence Award in 2004. In the fall of 2011, Fink was the first faculty member to be inducted into the Grady Fellowship, a society of Grady’s most accomplished alumni and friends.

View Fink’s tribute video here.

Until his retirement this year, Jim Galloway had been an editor and writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1979. Most recently, he had served as the newspaper’s political columnist and was the creator of its current-events blog, Political Insider, a popular feature that draws millions of readers annually.

He has lived in Cobb County for 40 years.

Galloway’s fields of specialty have included religion, focusing on conservative evangelicals in the South, and international affairs. He was formerly the newspaper’s foreign editor. In the Golden Era of newspapers – i.e., when the industry had money to spare – he reported from Germany, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, southern Africa, Israel and the West Bank.

Among his awards is the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship Program at the University of Michigan, where Galloway studied Chinese language, economics and philosophy. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia.

Galloway has written extensively about American politics at the local, municipal, state, regional and national levels. A near-native of metropolitan Atlanta, he has watched the American South shift from a segregated society ruled by white men to a region awash in diversity – although race and religion remain the keys to political power in the American South.

Galloway has been married to the former Judy Carr for 43 years (44 after Oct. 29, 2021). They have two grown children: Carol, a North Cobb High School history teacher; and Emily, who works for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington, D.C. In his spare time, which he hopes to have more of now, he enjoys woodworking.

George Goodwin was born and raised in Atlanta’s West End. His first job was selling copies of the Saturday Evening Post for a nickel each on Atlanta’s street corners. Today, Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and frequently called Atlanta’s “dean of public relations.” He graduated in 1939 with an A.B. degree and a certificate in journalism from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. During World War II, he served three years in the United States Navy, including 20 months as an intelligence officer for torpedo boat squadrons in the Pacific. After the war, Goodwin began his newspaper career as a reporter and feature writer, first on the Atlanta Georgian, then the News and Courier of Charleston, S.C., the Washington Times-Herald and the Miami Daily News. In December 1945, Goodwin joined the Atlanta Journal, covering investigative reporting and political writing with emphasis on Atlanta’s City Hall. In 1946, he covered the Winecoff Hotel fire; he was never convinced the fire’s origin was properly investigated. In 1948, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for distinguished reporting in the Journal of the 1946 Telfair County voting frauds, an element of Georgia’s famous “three-governors” controversy. Goodwin’s career in journalism translated into a solid career in public relations with a focus on serving Atlanta. From 1952 to 1954, he was executive director of The Central Atlanta Improvement Association. He served 10 years as vice president for advertising and public relations for The First National Bank of Atlanta. In 1965 he opened the Atlanta office of Bell and Stanton, a New York-based public relations agency that today is part of Manning, Selvage & Lee. For many years, he spearheaded the Forward Atlanta campaign. George and his wife, Lois “Skippy” Goodwin, were among the founders of Atlanta’s Trinity Presbyterian Church. He was instrumental in the formation of The Atlanta Arts Alliance, served as a trustee for Oglethorpe University, and chaired Atlanta’s observance of the nation’s Bicentennial. He served on Atlanta committees dealing with traffic and libraries. He has informally advised business and civic leaders, including many of Atlanta’s mayors, starting with William Hartsfield. He served as a senior counselor for Atlanta Rotary. The Georgia chapter of the Public Relations Society of America has an annual volunteer service award named in his honor.

View Goodwin’s tribute video here.

Henry W. Grady served as managing editor for the Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s and remains one of the most influential journalists in Southern and American history. He used the newspaper to advocate for a New South platform that combined northern investment, industrial growth, diversified farming, and white supremacy. His legacy on this city and state remains visible. Grady County was named for him in 1905, as was Grady Memorial Hospital in 1892 in Atlanta, and the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia in 1921. Born in Athens in 1850, Grady graduated from the University of Georgia and first wrote for the Rome Courier in 1871. In 1872, he purchased a half-interest in the Atlanta Herald that folded four years later. To make a living, he became the New York Herald’s Atlanta correspondent, and a story about the 1876 presidential election helped him land a job at the Atlanta Constitution. From 1880-1886, under his leadership, the Constitution became an outlet for the Democratic Party in Atlanta known as the Atlanta Ring. Grady used his influence to help elect Joseph E. Brown to the U.S. Senate and John B. Gordon as governor of Georgia. In addition to serving as managing editor, Grady also wrote a “Man About Town” column and covered local sports, including the performance of the city’s first professional baseball team. His 1886 speech to the New England Society of New York City on “The New South” made him a spokesman for this new industrial movement that has so shaped Atlanta. In addition to his work as a journalist and editor, Henry Grady also helped establish the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1887 and promoted the city through expositions and industrial fairs in 1881, 1887, and 1895. Grady’s sudden death from pneumonia in 1889 did not diminish his influence on the city and the state. The New York Times called him “one of the South’s most brilliant sons.”

View Grady’s tribute video here.

Lewis Grizzard was known for his insightful and humorous observations of the changing South.

Grizzard was born in Fort Benning, Georgia and grew up in Moreland, Georgia. He graduated from the University of Georgia. At 23, Grizzard became The Atlanta Journal’s youngest-ever executive sports editor. He helped lead the paper’s coverage of historic sports events such as Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record.

Grizzard left Atlanta briefly to serve as the executive sports editor at the Chicago Sun-Times but returned to Atlanta in 1977 as a sports columnist for The Atlanta Constitution. By 1978, he expanded his focus from sports to a humorous lifestyle column with observations about the changing South. These columns led to being syndicated in 450 newspapers and appearances on television as well as the stand-up comedy circuit. During his career, he authored more than 25 books.

In 1988, Grizzard appeared in an episode of “Designing Women,” playing Clayton Sugarbaker, the half-brother of Julia and Suzanne Sugarbaker.

Grizzard died in 1994 at the age of 47. One of his final wishes was for his ashes to be scattered on the 50-yard-line of his beloved UGA Bulldog’s Sanford Stadium in Athens.

View Grizzard’s tribute video here.

Paul Hemphill, whose literary career ranged from journalism to novels to essays, died of cancer July 11, 2009 in Atlanta. His writing focused on the blue-collar South, and the subjects of his sharp prose included NASCAR racing, country music, college football and the region’s long struggle for racial equality and justice. Georgia author Roy Blount Jr. told The New York Times that “Old country music had an honest catch in its voice, and so did Hemphill, writing about baseball or whiskery or his old man or himself … He could tell what it was like for people who are just scraping by.”

Paul James Hemphill was born in Birmingham, Alabama, though he lived and worked for much of his life in Atlanta. His literary legacy was shared by Georgia and Alabama, and mourners at his funeral were nearly equally divided between the two states. He was the son of a long-haul trucker, a man he knew as a racist, and about whom Hemphill wrote of in a tough memoir of their relationship, “Leaving Birmingham: Notes of a Native Son” (1993). He loved baseball and tried out for a minor league team, but was cut from the roster. After he got an undergraduate degree at Auburn University, he began writing about sports for newspapers in Birmingham, Tampa and Augusta before being hired in 1964 by the now-defunct Atlanta Times. He soon was hired by the Atlanta Journal and soon became a popular columnist.

In his first book, “The Nashville Sound” (1970), he wrote what is still acknowledged to be one of the best books about country music. It sold well and allowed Hemphill to become a full-time writer. His second book, “The Good Old Boys” (1974), of which The New York Times said that the author “wrote about minor-league ballplayers, hell-raisers and twangy country singers,” also sold well. In “The Heart of the Game” (1996) and the novel “Long Ago” (1979), he wrote with clear-eyed affection about minor league baseball players and teams. The latter book was made into an HBO movie in 1987. Other books included novels “The Sixkiller Chronicles” (1985), “Nobody’s Hero” (2002) and “King of the Road” (1989) as well as Wheels” (1997), a book about NASCAR, “Me and the Boy” (1992) and “Lost in the Lights,” a 2003 collection of his sports writing.

His next-to-last book was “Lovesick Blues” in 2005, a poignant, vividfly drawn biography of one of country music’s greatest performers, the legendary Hank Williams. Critics called it “definitive” and “a biography gritty and strong and real;” it was selected for the Center for the Book’s 2010 list of “25 Books All Georgians Should Read.” His final book, completed shortly before his death, was a volume about Auburn University’s football history, “A Tiger Walk Through History.” Hemphill also collaborated in writing two other books, “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” and “Mayor,” an autobiography of the late Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen. His essays also appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines including “Life,” “Reader’s Digest” and “Sport.” The Georgia Center for the Book placed Hemphill’s “Leaving Birmingham” on its 2005 list of “25 Books All Georgians Should Read,” and he appeared several times at the Center’s lecture programs throughout the first decade of the 21st century.

Clark Howard is a renowned consumer advocate and financial expert sharing practical advice to help people save more and spend less for more than 30 years. He started his career by founding a successful travel agency. He later transitioned to media, inspired by the desire to educate people on saving money and making informed financial decisions. In 1989, he started “The Clark Howard Show” on WGST Radio in Atlanta, offering practical advice on saving money, investing, and navigating consumer issues. His approachable, no-nonsense style quickly gained popularity, leading to national syndication of his radio show. In 1991, Clark became a consumer affairs TV reporter for WSB-TV and founded the Consumer Action Center in 1993. In addition to his broadcasting career, he is a prolific author and has written several best-selling books. His work extends through his website, Clark.com, and his national podcast, The Clark Howard Podcast, where he continues to educate and empower consumers. Beyond his reporting, he is an active philanthropist, focusing on community service and financial education initiatives. In 2015, Clark was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.

View Howard’s video tribute here.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault was born in Due West, South Carolina, although she spent a majority of her childhood in Covington, Georgia and Atlanta. In 1961, she and Hamilton Holmes made history when they became the first African-American students to enroll at the University of Georgia. Hunter-Gault graduated from UGA in 1963 with a degree in journalism and began her career as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker and went on to write short stories and also become one of the magazine’s Talk of the Town reporters. Later, she worked as a local news anchor for NBC in Washington, D.C., eventually joining the staff of The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter. Hunter-Gault opened the newspaper’s first Harlem bureau. She later joined PBS working for The MacNeil/Lehrer Report and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 1997, Hunter-Gault moved to South Africa to become the chief correspondent in Africa for National Public Radio. Later, in 1999, she served as CNN’s Johannesburg bureau chief until 2005. In 1985, UGA created the Holmes-Hunter Lecture, created during its bicentennial and focusing on social justice, race, diversity and education. In 2001, during the 40th anniversary of UGA’s desegregation, the building in which she and Hamilton first registered for classes was renamed the Holmes-Hunter Building. In 1988, Hunter-Gault became the first African-American to deliver UGA’s commencement speech. She has authored four books, including In My Place, regarding her experiences at UGA. Hunter-Gault recently launched a year-long series for the PBS NewsHour on solutions to the race problem in the US. She also regularly speaks on race, diversity, international relations, gender issues and journalism. She has won two Emmys and two Peabody awards, holds more than three dozen honorary degrees, and sits on the board of the Carter Center and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Hunter-Gault currently lives with her husband, Ronald T. Gault, dividing her time between Sarasota, Florida and Martha’s Vineyard.

View Hunter-Gault’s tribute video here.

Patricia Janiot is a familiar and highly respected figure in international news, known to millions of viewers across the U.S. and Latin America as the face of CNN en Español. Her distinguished career at the cable network has spanned almost 27 years, during which she first co-anchored the primetime newscast Noticiero Telemundo-CNN on Telemundo Network, then moved on to CNN, and later became CNN en Español’s senior anchor. After leaving CNN, Janiot joined Univision as co-anchor of the late-night network newscast, “Noticiero Univision Edición Nocturna.” She also served as co-anchor for the weekly primetime newsmagazine “Aquí y Ahora” (Here and Now). During her 38 years in journalism, Janiot has received numerous accolades for her journalistic achievements, including three Emmy Awards. Janiot has now retired from the news studios to begin a new chapter as an entrepreneur. She is about to publish her first book and has her own YouTube weekly program.

View Janiot’s video tribute here.

Lorenzo “Lo” Jelks began his career in radio at WIGO-AM. A graduate of Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), Jelks became the first Black television news reporter in Atlanta in 1967 when he was hired by WSB-TV. His notable coverage includes an interview with Jimmy Carter ahead of his election as the governor of Georgia in 1970. Upon leaving broadcast in 1976, Jelks returned to radio by creating WAUC-AM, a station committed to showcasing Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and The AUC Digest, a newspaper serving the Atlanta University Center.

View Jelks’ video tribute here 

Corey G. Johnson is an investigative reporter for ProPublica and for nearly 20 years has specialized in public service journalism. Before joining ProPublica, Corey created and led the Tampa Bay Times’ project “Poisoned.” The investigation triggered three government investigations, many of which are ongoing. Before the Times, Johnson was a reporter at The Marshall Project and also worked at the Center for Investigative Reporting in California. In 2022, Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and he’s been honored with numerous awards in print journalism, including the George Polk Award, the Gerald Loeb Award, the Worth Bingham Award, two IRE Gold Medals, the News Leader Award, the Scripps Howard Award, a National Headliners, and a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. He’s a proud native Atlantan and a co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society, which teaches investigative craft to aspiring and mid-career journalists of color.

View Johnson’s video tribute here.

In 2001, Tom Johnson announced his retirement as chairman and chief executive officer of CNN News Group after ten years. Prior to joining CNN, he served thirteen years as publisher for the Los Angeles Times. While at CNN, he “presided over a dramatic expansion of CNN’s newsgathering operations and led the network into the age of digital interactivity,” said Gerald Levin, chief executive officer at AOL Time Warner. “Throughout his tenure, he’s upheld and enhanced the traditions of journalistic integrity and independence that distinguish CNN as the world’s foremost news brand.” Born in Macon, Johnson worked for the Macon Telegraph while still a high school student. He graduated from the University of Georgia’s Henry Grady School of Journalism with an undergraduate degree and received a master’s degree from Harvard Business School. Johnson was asked to become a White House fellow and later worked for President Lyndon Baines Johnson and then the Texas Broadcasting System after LBJ retired to Texas. In 1975, Tom Johnson became the publisher of the Dallas Times Herald. From there, he moved to the Los Angeles Times, and, in 1990, he was tapped by Ted Turner to come to Atlanta to serve as president of CNN. Two years before retiring from CNN, in 1999, Johnson was given the Paul White Award, the most prestigious honor given by the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

View Johnson’s tribute video here.

Ernie Johnson, Jr. is the iconic voice of TNT Sports, an eight-time Sports Emmy Award winner and long-time host of TNT’s Inside the NBA studio show. With Ernie as host, Inside the NBA received five Sports Emmy Awards for Outstanding Studio Show – Daily. In addition to his more than 35 years hosting Inside the NBA, he hosts TNT Sports and CBS’s NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship studio coverage (since 2011) and has been an integral part of MLB on TBS game and studio coverage since 2007. He also co-hosts (alongside Charles Barkley) “The Steam Room”, a weekly podcast covering sports news, pop culture, and entertainment. Ernie was inducted into the 2023 class of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Additionally, he was recognized as the 2021 “National Sportscaster of the Year” by the National Sports Media Association and previously received the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation “Award of Excellence.” Ernie is also a best-selling author with “Unscripted: The Unpredictable Moments that Make Life Extraordinary.”

View Johnson’s video tribute here.

Fred Kalil began his television sports reporting career in high school reporting on basketball games at WNDU radio in South Bend, Indiana. In college, while playing football at Indiana University, Coach Lee Corso encouraged Kalil to pursue reporting over football. During his college years, Kalil hosted a weekly Indiana University football show on WTIU-TV and later served as an analyst and anchored weekend sports on an Indiana University network from WTTV-TV in Indianapolis. After graduation, at the age of 22, he became a sports reporter in Huntington, West Virginia. In 1989, Kalil moved to WISH-TV in Indianapolis, where his work as a sports broadcaster attracted the attention of news directors across the country. He became sports director at WXIA-TV 11Alive News in Atlanta in 1992; he has witnessed and reported every major sporting event for the region ever since. One of Kalil’s largest assignments was leading the coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. He also pioneered, in the Atlanta market, coverage of multiple Friday night high school football games at once, now a staple of local television news departments nationwide. He has earned multiple Emmy awards for Best Sportscaster, Associated Press awards for Sportscaster of the Year and Georgia Association of Broadcasters awards. He moved to CBS46 in 2015. His command of the beat, his respect for the fans and his love of amateur and professional athletics resonate on-air as one of the city’s and the nation’s best sports journalists.

View Kalil’s tribute video here.

Mary Louise Kelly is co-host of “All Things Considered,” NPR’s flagship evening news magazine. A Georgia native, Kelly’s first job was pounding the streets as a political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1996, she made the leap to broadcasting, joining the team that launched BBC/Public Radio International’s The World. The following year, Kelly moved to London to work as a producer for CNN and as a senior producer, host, and reporter for the BBC World Service. In 2001, Kelly returned to the United States to join NPR. Kelly’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsweek, and other publications. She is also the author of two novels with a third forthcoming from Henry Holt in 2023.

View Kelly’s video tribute here

Hank Klibanoff was born and grew up in Florence, Alabama. He attended Washington University in St. Louis and earned an English degree, then received his Masters degree in journalism at the Medill School at Northwestern University. In 2007, Klibanoff, along with his co-author Gene Roberts, won a Pulitzer Prize in History for The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. Klibanoff began his journalism career as a reporter at small local papers in Mississippi, then moved to The Boston Globe for three years and worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 20 years. He served as managing editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for six years, until 2008. During that time, the AJC won two Pulitzer Prizes and was a finalist for a third. After leaving the AJC, Klibanoff transitioned to teaching as the James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism at Emory University. He later was named director of the journalism program until Emory closed the program in 2014. He continues to hold the Cox chair and to teach. Klibanoff also serves as the director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory, for which students investigate unsolved and unpunished racially-motivated murders that took place in Georgia during the modern civil rights era.

View Klibanoff’s tribute video here.

From The Atlanta Voice

The Atlanta Voice lost a piece of its heart on Tuesday, March 9, when its Executive Editor and Chief Content Officer Marshall A. Latimore, 36, passed away suddenly. The cause of death has not yet been determined.

Latimore served as executive editor since joining The Atlanta Voice in 2017.

“Marshall stood in the epicenter of this Atlanta treasure as we have transformed The Atlanta Voice into a multi-media powerhouse set to grow our legacy for generations to come,” said Janis Ware, publisher of The Atlanta Voice.

“His leadership cannot be replaced but his direction will be followed as our mission continues to be a voice for the voiceless.”

A Birmingham, Alabama native, Latimore moved to Atlanta from Nashville, TN to head up The Atlanta Voice’s editorial department and help transform it into a multi-media company, leaving his position as the executive editor of StayOnTheGo Magazine where he resided for four years.

Prior to taking his position at StayOnTheGo, he also served as a graphic designer for Gannett, the Alabama Media Group, Gatehouse Media, before becoming the art director for the Houston Defender Media Group.

Latimore spearheaded a rebranding transformation for The Atlanta Voice and helped elevate the media outlet’s names to national visibility.

“Marshall’s leadership, vision and his unique ability to shepherd up-and-coming journalists are some of the ingredients to his flame I seek to never extinguish,” said Itoro Umontuen, Digital Managing Editor. “More than a co-worker, he was a brother to me and those who knew him best, harkening back to our college days at Tennessee State University.”

In a short amount of time, he changed The Atlanta Voice’s look, in print and online, brought in new talent, wrote newsbreaking articles, and touched many lives in the process.

“One of the major changes Marshall brought to the organization was a renewed sense of community,” Umontuen said. “He had a unique way of connecting with people that was genuine. People would leave meetings feeling enriched, entertained and with greater insight.”

Latimore’s commitment to journalism was seen through his involvement in the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) where he mentored young Black journalists. He was also a mentor for the General Motor’s “Discover The Unexpected” program, which took Black journalists for Historically Black Colleges & Universities and placed them with historical Black newspapers for a summer internship.

He also personally mentored students from Georgia State University, Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College, giving many of them their first bylines and cover stories.

Additionally, there were many people who he kept in constant contact who never formally met him in person. His influence was never felt just in Atlanta but from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and the most southern regions of America to the Canadian border.

Latimore also is survived by his mother Mary and brothers, Mitchell, Michel, and Martin. The family is currently in the process of organizing a memorial service. They are also planning to set up a scholarship fund in Latimore’s name.

Boyd Henry Lewis, Jr. is a photographer, teacher and former journalist who worked with black-owned newspapers in Atlanta. Lewis was hired by the Atlanta Voice, a black-owned weekly newspaper, in 1969 and in 1973 by the Atlanta Inquirer, where he covered Mayor Maynard Jackson and the election of civil rights leader Andrew Young to Congress. Lewis later became a reporter and wrote, produced and hosted “Southwind” a program featuring news, interviews and events in Atlanta.

Click here to view the 2020 Hall of Fame TV special.

Tony Light is chief photographer at WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia. With over four decades of experience, Tony is a vital part of the station’s news team, capturing compelling visuals that bring stories to life. Known for his keen eye and artistic approach, he has covered a wide range of events, from breaking news to major sporting events, earning multiple awards for his exceptional work. Tony’s dedication to his craft and his ability to connect with people through his lens has made him a respected figure in the Atlanta media community. Throughout his career, Tony has demonstrated a relentless pursuit of capturing truth and authenticity through his photography. His ability to convey complex stories through compelling images has left a lasting impact on the field of photojournalism, and his work continues to inspire both colleagues and viewers alike. Tony celebrated 40 years at WSB-TV in 2017, and in 2018, was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts & Science Silver Circle. Outside of work, he enjoys mentoring aspiring photographers and exploring the vibrant city he calls home.

View Light’s video tribute here.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution political cartoonist Mike Luckovich began his career freelancing and selling life insurance after graduating from the University of Washington in 1982. The Seattle native’s first cartooning job was at the Greenville News in South Carolina. Nine months later, he headed farther south to New Orleans to work at The Times-Picayune. It wasn’t until four years later in 1989 that Luckovich would move to Atlanta to begin his career at the AJC. Before joining the AJC, Luckovich was a runner-up for the Pulitzer in 1987. It wasn’t until 1995 that he finally won. In 2001, he won the Reuben award for Editorial Cartooning. However, in 2006 Luckovich won a second Pulitzer and the Reuben for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. Luckovich has also won the Overseas Press Club’s award for “Best Cartoons on Foreign Affairs in 1989” and the National Headliners award for editorial cartoonists. Luckovich’s achievements also include published books – Lotsa Luckovich, Four More Wars, and A Very Stable Genius, which follows Trump’s antics from the 2016 election through the Mueller investigation. Luckovich lives in Atlanta with his wife and four kids.

View Luckovich’s 2018 acceptance remarks here.

Lee May was a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He won the National Conference of Christians and Jews’ Gold Medal Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize. In addition to writing the book Gardening Life, Lee May also authored My Father’s Garden. May wrote for The Los Angeles Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 25 years, as well as Southern Living and US Airways’ in-flight magazine – Attaché, as well as numerous home and garden publications.

Click here to view the 2020 Hall of Fame TV special.

Budd McEntee spent nearly two decades at the helm of the largest local broadcast news operation in the southeast. As vice president of news at WAGA-TV in Atlanta, he nearly tripled newscast airtime to 57 hours per week.  He emphasized day-to-day, breaking news coverage, while also building the I-Team staff and budget, transforming the unit into a powerhouse of long-form, investigative journalism respected and admired across the country.

McEntee steered WAGA-TV’s successful transition from CBS affiliate to FOX affiliate to FOX O&O.  He developed one of the nation’s top-rated prime time newscasts and supervised the creation and expansion of five and a half hours of locally produced, weekday morning news.

By the time McEntee retired from the station in 2010, he had been the vice president of news for nearly two decades, leaving a legacy of tough, aggressive news coverage that remains a hallmark of the station’s “dedicated, determined and dependable” mission.

During his nearly 40-year career, McEntee has been a producer, executive producer, managing editor and news director. Under McEntee’s leadership, the station’s much admired, much emulated I-Team was recognized with the Peabody Award for Investigative Journalism. McEntee and his team won the Emmy for best newscast six times between 2000-2010. McEntee was inducted into the NATAS Silver Circle and is a past president of the Atlanta Press Club.

The best journalism is the result of team effort, flourishing consistently because of the support and guidance of executive vision and leadership, and it is personified by one of Atlanta’s toughest and most successful journalism executives, Budd McEntee.

View McEntee’s tribute video here.

For nearly three decades, Ralph Waldo Emerson McGill served as the editor and publisher of The Atlanta Constitution, a syndicated columnist whose work appeared in more than 200 newspapers, as well as a contributor to major national magazines. Known as the Conscience of the South, today he still remains one of the most influential journalists in Southern and American history for his vocal stance on racial equality. His legacy to Atlanta remains strong and is evident in his namesakes; Ralph McGill Boulevard, Ralph McGill Middle School and the prestigious McGill Lecture, which is held annually at The Grady School of Journalism, University of Georgia, Athens. After being expelled from Vanderbilt University for writing commentary that questioned university administration, McGill moved to Atlanta in 1929 to become the assistant sports editor of The Atlanta Constitution and then covered agriculture and took on a variety of assignments. He covered the first Cuban Revolt in 1937. After applying for and winning a Rosenwald Fellowship, he was free to study and write throughout Europe during the first six months of 1938 covering the Nazi takeover of Austria. McGill’s unique perspective and austere voice in these articles earned him the position of executive editor of the Constitution. As executive editor, McGill used his daily columns as a platform to advocate for equality and the end of segregation. Outraged readers attempted to intimidate McGill through threatening letters, burning crosses in his yard, shooting at the McGill home and hiding rudimentary bombs in his mailbox. Despite the threats and economic blackmail, McGill continued to write seven days a week, enduring harsh criticism for his convictions. He would also serve as a civil rights advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He stood behind President Johnson when the Civil Rights bill was signed in 1964. In 1959, the Pulitzer Prize Committee awarded McGill the prize for editorial writing, praising his ‘courageous and effective editorial leadership’ of the Constitution, citing his editorials for their “clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning and power to influence public opinion”. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, he received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. His bibliography, which began June 1938 until his death in February 1969, includes The Fleas Come With the Dog, The South and the Southerner and No Place to Hide: the South and Human Rights, and more than 10,000 daily columns.

View McGill’s tribute video here.

Robin Meade is best known as the long-time host of HLN’s “Morning Express with Robin Meade,” a New York Times best-selling author & winner of the prestigious Gracie Award for Outstanding Anchor. Broadcasting from the CNN Center in Atlanta since 2001, Meade is regarded as the longest-running anchor of a national morning news show. Among her notable assignments during a 21-year run: jumping out of a perfectly good plane with President George H.W. Bush on live TV for his 85th birthday, covering the inauguration of President Obama and President Trump on location respectively, and the exclusive first interview with freed U.S. hostages from FARC captors in Columbia. She was the face of the network’s daily “Salute To Troops” segment and hosted “Accent Health” with Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Turner Private Networks. Known for her cheery “Morning Sunshine!” greetings, Meade’s alarm rang at 3 a.m. on weekdays so she could be in the anchor chair by 6 a.m. for a marathon four-hour live show. While most other national morning shows were coming out of New York, “Morning Express with Robin Meade” was based out of Atlanta, a differentiation Meade relished.

View Meade’s video tribute here.

Pat Mitchell was the first woman president of PBS and of CNN productions, and also a visionary, award-winning TV and film producer. She is the editorial director of TED Women, chair of the Sundance and the Women’s Media Center boards and a trustee of the VDAY movement, the Skoll Foundation and the Acumen Fund. She is an advisor to Participant Media and served as a congressional appointment to The American Museum of Women’s History Advisory Council. She is the author of Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing Risk to Change the World.

Click here to view the 2020 Hall of Fame TV special.

Margaret Mitchell was the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the Civil War era novel, Gone With the Wind. An Atlanta native, Mitchell began reporting for the Atlanta Journal in 1922. After making her first appearance in the paper’s Rotogravure section as an Atlanta debutante, there were skeptics about her ability to tackle the job. Over the next four years, she wrote more than 125 feature articles, 85 news stories, multiple book reviews and even wrote an advice column using a pseudonym. Looking back on her years as a newspaper reporter, Mitchell recognized that “being a reporter was a liberal education” which exposed her “to the sad things and the horrible things that go on in the world.” Lamenting complacency about the world’s social ills, she said “It is not so much that people are cold-hearted and selfish, it is just that they have not seen. And what eye has not seen, heart cannot feel.” Gone with the Wind was published in June 1936. Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize the following May. It was made into an equally famous motion picture starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. The movie garnered a record number of Academy Awards when it premiered in 1939, including Best Motion Picture. Throughout her adult life, Mitchell supported numerous social service organizations including the Red Cross, the Florence Crittendon Home (now Families First), St. Joseph’s Hospital, Morehouse College and MaHarry Medical College. With the guidance of Dr. Benjamin Mays, she anonymously funded numerous scholarships for Morehouse students making it possible for them to go to medical school. Mitchell was killed in 1949 after being struck by a speeding taxi while crossing Peachtree Street.

View Mitchell’s tribute video here.

Jovita Moore was an Emmy award-winning television news reporter who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Bennington College and a Master of Science degree in broadcast journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She anchored at WMC-TV in Memphis and KSFM in Fayetteville and Fort Smith, Arkansas before moving to Atlanta’s WSB-TV. In 2017, Moore was inducted into the Silver Circle by the Southeast Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She also won several Emmy awards for her journalistic contributions centered around cystic fibroids, the eclipse, and more. After a seven-month battle with brain cancer, she succumbed to her illness on October 28, 2021.

View Moore’s video tribute here

Aubrey Morris, originally from Roswell, Georgia, worked as a contributor for the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution as a teenager. He went on to become editor of the Red and Black while earning a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia. Morris then worked as a police reporter for the Atlanta Journal, covering events such as the 1946 Winecoff Hotel Fire in downtown Atlanta. Morris remained in this role for more than 10 years. When Elmo Ellis created the first news department at WSB Radio, Morris expressed interest in making a move to the station. The city editor at the Atlanta Journal recommended Morris to Ellis, but cautioned him, “he has a terrible, nasal voice.” Despite the warning, Ellis hired Morris to become WSB Radio’s first news director. Morris would soon become, as Ellis described him, “the best known voice in Georgia broadcasting.” From 1957 until he retired in 1987, Morris was often the first reporter on the scene of major, breaking news. Morris often interrupted programming with live reports before he even arrived on the scene – his unmatched sources trusted him and called him with details before anyone else could learn them. Morris died in Milton, Georgia, in 2010 at the age of 88. He guided and molded generations of broadcast journalists, teaching the reporters who worked for him, by example, to uphold the highest standards of journalism. He truly was “the man who brought newspaper to radio in Atlanta.”

View Morris’ tribute video here.

Jack Nelson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, author, and longtime Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times born in Talladega, Alabama. After graduating from high school, Nelson began his journalism career with the Biloxi Daily Herald. He then worked for the U.S. Army writing press releases before taking a job with the Atlanta Constitution in 1952. In 1960, he won a Pulitzer for a series of articles that revealed inhumane practices at a mental hospital in Milledgeville, GA. Nelson was recruited to the Los Angeles Times in 1965. In the early 1970s, Nelson led the LA Times’s award-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal, and then served as the paper’s Washington Bureau Chief for 21 years, from 1975 to 1996. During that period, he was a frequent guest on television and radio news programs. He remained the paper’s chief Washington correspondent until retiring in 2001. Nelson died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland on October 21, 2009, ten days after his 80th birthday.

View Nelson’s video tribute here. 

Bill Nigut covered Georgia and national politics for WSB-TV for 20 years, traveling across the country to report on presidential primary elections, national conventions, debates and conducting one-on-one interviews with presidential candidates over five presidential election cycles from 1984 to 2000. He frequently reported from the White House and Capitol Hill as news took him to Washington, including covering the confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas, Newt Gingrich’s election as speaker of the house, the Clinton impeachment trial and more. In addition, he covered 18 sessions of the Georgia General Assembly. Bill subsequently spent more than nine years as the executive producer and host of “Political Rewind,” a daily political discussion program on Georgia Public Broadcasting, the state NPR network. In his final stop as a political journalist, Bill served as a host of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s political discussion program “Politically Georgia,” which aired on Atlanta public radio station WABE. He was inducted into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2021, and in 2019 was an inductee into the National Academy of Arts and Sciences Silver Circle for “outstanding contributions to the television community” in the Southeast. Bill retired on January 31, 2025, and is currently teaching a course on the history of Broadway musicals at Emory University’s continuing education program.

View Nigut’s video tribute here.

Denis O’Hayer started in journalism in 1971 at the Middlebury (Vt.) College student radio station, where he eventually became news director. In 1976, he began his professional career at WGCH Radio in Greenwich, Connecticut. He is the current co-host, along with Rose Scott, of Closer Look on 90.1 WABE. In 1978, O’Hayer moved to Atlanta, and started as a news anchor at Newsradio WGST. During his years at WGST, he was the moderator of Counterpoint, a political debate show and hosted Sixty at Six, an hour-long news block which started as a nightly update on the Persian Gulf War. After 19 years at WGST, he moved to CNN as a freelancer in the Southeast bureau, then went on to WXIA Channel 11 as a political reporter. After 11 years at WXIA, he joined WABE in 2009. At WABE, he was the local host of All Things Considered, before the 2015 launch of Closer Look, a news magazine and interview program covering the Atlanta area and North Georgia. O’Hayer also appeared regularly on WPBA-TV, Channel 30, where he hosted The Layman’s Lawyer from 1987-2004; and Atlanta This Week from 1996-2001. O’Hayer’s career honors include a National Headliner Award; national individual honors from United Press International and Investigative Reporters and Editors; three Achievement in Radio Awards for his interviews; the Associated Press Award for best television spot news coverage; a regional Edward R. Murrow award; and a regional Emmy award. The Georgia Association of Broadcasters named him its 2014 Broadcaster of the Year.

View O’Hayer’s tribute video here.

Eugene Patterson was born in Valdosta, Georgia. His father worked at a local bank, but when it closed during the Great Depression, the family moved to Adel, Georgia, where Patterson began work at the Adel News as a teenager. Patterson rose from Depression-poor south Georgia, graduated from the University of Georgia, fought bravely with General Patton’s Third Army in World War II, and reached journalism’s seats of power at The Atlanta Constitution, The Washington Post, The St. Petersburg Times and The Poynter Institute. As managing editor of the Post, Patterson helped convince Publisher Katherine Graham to publish the Pentagon Papers. It was his work as editor and columnist at the Constitution, writing a signed column seven days a week for eight years, from 1960 to 1968, that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1967. His columns exposed those who were fighting against the civil rights movement, supported those who bled and died for it and, as a result, put his own life and his families’ lives at risk. The column he wrote on Sunday, September 15, 1963, the day four children were murdered in the Birmingham church bombing, called “A Flower for the Graves,” stands as one of the most powerful calls for changed hearts and changed minds across the South and the rest of the nation — a column for all times, a beacon — in the history of civil rights journalism. As Robert McFadden of The New York Times wrote, “In 41 years as a reporter, editor and news executive, Mr. Patterson… was one of America’s most highly regarded journalists — a plain-talking, hard-driving competitor known for fairness and integrity as the nation confronted racial turmoil, divisions over the Vietnam War and new ethical challenges in journalism.” Patterson died in 2013 at the age of 89.

View Patterson’s tribute video here.

In 2012, members of the U.S. Congress took a moment to honor Monica Pearson as a pioneer and a trailblazer in television news. For nearly four decades, Monica Kaufman Pearson’s tenure as anchor for Channel 2 Action News made her one of the longest-running anchors in the market. Monica began her journalism career in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, as a reporter for The Louisville Times. After a short stint in public relations, Monica joined Louisville’s WHAS-TV as a reporter and anchor. When Pearson joined WSB-TV in 1975, she became Atlanta’s first minority and the city’s first female to anchor the evening news. Pearson remained in that role for more than thirty years. She held the same position at the same station longer than any other television personality in Atlanta and longer than most women in the entire country. Throughout Pearson’s time at WSB she contributed to many award-winning stories. She is also well known for the long-running Monica Kaufman’s Close-Ups, in which she interviewed renowned scholars, world leaders and celebrities, including Barbara Walters, Andrew Young and Ted Turner. For her professional work, Pearson has received some of journalism’s highest honors, including 30 Emmy Awards, the Women’s Sports Journalism Award for Local Television Reporting, and two National American Women in Radio and Television Awards.

View Pearson’s tribute video here.

Dick Pettys, who died at age 66 in 2012, was a well-known Georgia political reporter for the Associated Press for 35 years. During his career, he covered the terms of seven governors, from Lester Maddox through Sonny Perdue. Pettys retired in 2005. Pettys spent his career covering politics and was a familiar face at the Georgia State Capitol, earning the nickname “dean” of the Capitol press corps. His thorough but fair reporting earned him the respect of his colleagues as well as the politicians he covered. Pettys also served as a mentor to many journalists getting started in their careers. In 1992, Pettys received two awards for a story on a hidden slush fund within the Georgia State House of Representatives: the Associated Press Managing Editors Association Award for Top AP Reportorial Performance and the AP Broadcasters Award for Best State Enterprise Story. Pettys was actively involved as a volunteer leader in the Atlanta Area Council, Boy Scouts of America, where he served as a Cubmaster and a Scoutmaster. He was awarded the Scouters Key, the Scouters Training Award, the North Atlanta District Award of Merit and earned the Scout Leaders’ Wood Badge beads. In 1984, he was awarded the Atlanta Area Council Silver Beaver Award, the highest award the Boy Scouts of America can bestow. The Georgia State Capitol Senate press gallery and the Capitol Media Center were named Pettys’ honor after his passing.

View Pettys’ tribute video here.

John Pruitt’s tenure in broadcasting has spanned 46 years of incredible history-making events, covering notable moments from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral to Jimmy Carter’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, to the 9/11 attacks. He began his television news career as a reporter and cameraman, covering major civil rights stories around the South. From 1965-67, he served as an infantry lieutenant in the U.S. Army in Seoul, South Korea, and Fort Gordon, Georgia. Upon his return to WSB in 1967, John resumed his reporting career, eventually rising to the position of weekend anchor. In 1973, he became anchor of the 6 and 11 p.m. news. In 1978, John joined WXIA-TV as evening news anchor, but in 1994 he rejoined WSB to anchor the 6 and 11 p.m. news. Pruitt anchored his last 11 p.m. newscast at WSB-TV on July 7, 2010, ending a 41-year run as a news anchor. John has a history degree from Davidson College and has received many awards for his anchoring and reporting, including: ten Emmys, five Sigma Delta Chi Quill Awards, the UPI Award for his coverage of Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign and coverage of a north Georgia airliner crash, the Georgia Winner Award for Public Service, Pioneer Broadcaster Award from the University of Georgia journalism school, the Silver Circle Award from the National Academy of Radio Arts and Sciences, and the Distinguished Achievement in Broadcasting Award from DiGamma Kappa at the University of Georgia School of Journalism. Pruitt is an active volunteer with many groups, including Literacy Action, the Nature Conservancy of Georgia, and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

View Pruitt’s tribute video here.

Bill Rankin, the AJC’s legal affairs reporter, has worked for the paper for more than 30 years. Since 2015, he has been the host and narrator of the AJC’s Breakdown podcast. He has covered trials such as Atlanta lawyer Fred Tokars, NFL star Ray Lewis, the Gold Club and Justin Ross Harris. Bill has also exposed inequities and breakdowns in Georgia’s indigent defense system, its administration of the death penalty and its civil and criminal justice systems. Bill is the son of Jim Rankin, who worked as an editor for the newspaper for 26 years before retiring in 1986.

Click here to view the 2020 Hall of Fame TV special.

Highly decorated senior investigative reporter Dale Russell has spent the entirety of his journalism career in Atlanta, GA. Leaving a job as a high school guidance counselor, Russell decided to follow his own ambition and love of writing. Beginning as a successful freelance magazine writer, Russell joined WGST Radio as a reporter, eventually branching out to television as an investigative reporter. As the FOX 5-I Teams’ government watchdog, Dale has given voice to some of the nation’s biggest stories, including Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered children, the Olympic Park bombing, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Russell’s work has directly affected Georgia’s political history toppling people in power, exposing corruption, sparking criminal investigations and changing laws. One of Russell’s more infamous exposés on Georgia’s Speaker of the House, Glenn Richardson, and presidential candidate, Herman Cain, lead to dramatic changes in the state and nation’s political landscape. His examination of racial profiling by U.S. Customs agents at Atlanta’s airport lead to a nationwide overhaul of customs searches. Russell is a board member of the First Amendment Foundation, which fights for openness in government, and he has served as a teacher at the Radio Television News Directors Foundation (RTNDF) teaching journalism to students and journalism teachers.

View Russell’s tribute video here.

Maria Saporta, founder and executive editor of the SaportaReport, is a longtime Atlanta business, civic and urban affairs journalist. SaportaReport, founded in 2009, provides a forum for local journalists, guest columnists, and local features. Maria also is co-founder of Atlanta Way 2.0, an initiative aimed at strengthening Atlanta’s civic fabric by inspiring movement leading to greater civic engagement from people of all walks of life. From 2008 to 2020, Maria wrote a weekly column and news stories for the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Prior to that, she spent 27 years with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Maria is a past president of the Atlanta Press Club, and she continues to serve in an emeritus role after 35 years of board service. She also co-chairs the Atlanta Press Club’s “Loudermilk-Young Debate Series” committee. Maria was inducted into the 2002 YWCA Academy of Women Achievers and, in 2012, was inducted into the Georgia State University Business Hall of Fame. In 2013, she received the Atlanta Business League CEO Award for Vision of Excellence. Maria also was given the inaugural “Atlanta Hero” award by the Rotary Club of Atlanta in 2018 and, in 2019, was inducted into Georgia Trend’s Hall of Fame.

View Saporta’s video tribute here.

Journalist and publisher Marian Alexis Scott was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently the publisher of the Atlanta Daily World, which was founded by her grandfather W.A. Scott II in 1928. It was Atlanta’s and the nation’s first successful African-American daily newspaper. It became a semi-weekly in May 1930, and a triweekly in April 1931. That same year, Scott also began circulating The Chattanooga Tribune, The Memphis World, and The Chattanooga Tribune, thus establishing the first chain of African American newspapers that would grow as large as 50. In 1932, the paper became a daily. When W.A. was murdered in 1934, his brother, Cornelius Aldophus (C.A.) Scott became publisher and adopted a more conservative Republican voice. The Atlanta Daily World was one of the first papers to encourage African Americans to patronize black-owned businesses, advocated voter registration drives, and focused on the needs of the community by reporting on church, social, and sporting news. In 1944, the Atlanta Daily World was also the first paper to assign an African American correspondent to the White House. C.A. Scott retired in 1997, and his great niece, Alexis Scott Reeves, was named publisher. After a twenty-two year career with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Cox Enterprises, Inc, she joined the family business. Well known in the city, she is a featured commentator on The Georgia Gang on Atlanta’s FOX 5. Scott is also active in nonprofit organizations such as St. Jude’s Recovery Center, Kenny Leon’s True Colors theater company, the Atlanta History Center, the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Central Atlanta Progress. In 2003, she was appointed by Mayor Shirley Franklin to the board of the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency. Alexis Scott has received many awards and honors, including the Imperial Court Daughters of Isis Hall of Fame Award, the TD Jake’s Megafest Phenomenal Woman Award, an honorary doctor of humane letters from Argosy University, and a Citizen of the Year Award from Southwest Hospital and Medical Center. She is a past-president of the Atlanta Press Club.

View Scott’s tribute video here.

William “Bill” Shipp is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who has covered southern politics and government for more than five decades. His political commentary and predictions are acknowledged and heeded by policy makers and activists. A native of Georgia, Shipp attended Emory University where he was the managing editor of the Emory Wheel and the University of Georgia where he was the managing editor of the Red and Black. In 1953, eight years before the integration of UGA, Shipp wrote editorials criticizing the University Board of Regents for not allowing African American Horace Ward into the University’s School of Law. When the Regents attempted to restrict editorial content, Shipp resigned in protest. Shipp joined The Atlanta Constitution as a reporter in 1956. He then spent three decades on the staff of The Atlanta Journal the Constitution, where he served as associate editor, city editor and political editor. During his tenure at the Atlanta Newspapers, Shipp covered the civil rights movement, the Republican Revolution and countless political campaigns. He also found success working for Newsday and the EPA. In 1987, he resigned his position as political editor to begin Bill Shipp’s Georgia newsletter. In 1994, Shipp became the first Georgian to successfully publish a political blog. After selling his newsletter, Shipp continued to write twice-weekly columns which appeared in more than 60 newspapers. He was a contributing panelist on WAGA-TV’s The Georgia Gang, a weekly roundtable discussion of current events. Bill Shipp is a founding member of The Atlanta Press Club.

View Shipp’s tribute video here.

Jon Shirek was a revered Atlanta journalist who devoted more than 40 years to telling the stories of Georgia with clarity, compassion, and integrity. Jon was born in Fargo, North Dakota, and grew up there and in Melbourne Beach, Florida. Jon began his career while attending the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, working at The Independent Florida Alligator newspaper, WRUF-AM, and WTLV-TV in Jacksonville. After graduating in 1974, he began working full time at WTLV. In 1980, Jon moved to Atlanta and WXIA-TV 11Alive News, reporting for 43 years about people, events, and issues defining our times and affecting our future. His Emmy award-winning stories and sonorous voice earned him the newsroom nickname The Poet. He mentored many in the newsroom and was a steady presence during times of crisis and change. Jon retired from 11Alive in February 2024 and passed away on April 14, 2025. His passing marks the end of a remarkable chapter in Georgia journalism. His voice, character, and commitment to the truth leave a lasting imprint on the city he loved and the profession he served so faithfully.

View Shirek’s video tribute here.

Southern native, Celestine Sibley, renowned author and journalist, was one of the most popular and long-running columnists for The Atlanta Constitution. During her more than 50-year career with the Constitution, Sibley penned more than 10,000 stories and columns on topics varying from Georgia politics, to murder trials to favorite Southern gardens and family recipes. Her columns made her an icon in the South. Sibley began working at the Atlanta Constitution in 1941, shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the U.S. entered World War II, the resulting staff depletion opened doors for Sibley to become one of the first female editors at the Constitution, working under the tutelage of Ralph McGill, the paper’s publisher. Sibley preferred being a reporter, finding the oddities in life that make good stories and reporting on breaking news stories firsthand. During her career, Celestine Sibley covered many high profile stories getting her front-page coverage on the three governors’ controversy, the acquittal of convicted murderer Floyd Woodward, and the murder trial of John Wallace. During this time, Sibley also worked as a Hollywood correspondent interviewing movie stars and film-makers doing, what she called, “fluff stories.” “Pulp stories” also became a notable part of Sibley’s versatile writing career selling stories with such shocking headlines as “I Was a Junkie.” While still covering Georgia politics and courtrooms, Sibley also launched her career as a fiction writer in 1957, with the publication of The Malignant Heart, the first book in the Kate Mulcay mystery series. Over the next 40 years, Sibley published books in a variety of genres. In 1990 she received the Ralph McGill Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism. Even after she retired in the late 1990s, Celestine Sibley continued writing books, as well as continuing her columns about southern life. Sibley passed away in August 1999. She continued working until the final week of her life, with her last regular column appearing on July 25, 1999.

View Sibley’s tribute video here.

Claude Sitton was born in Atlanta in December of 1925. From humble beginnings, he grew up on a farm near Conyers, Georgia. Today, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and often referred to as “the standard bearer for civil rights journalism.” During World War II, Sitton served two and one half years in the United States Navy. After the war he enrolled at the Oxford College of Emory University, spent a year there and then moved to Emory’s Atlanta campus. In his last year at Emory, he served as editor of the Emory Wheel. Sitton earned his B.A. in journalism in 1949. Sitton began his professional journalism career working as a wire service reporter and editor for International News Service in Miami, Florida, and then as a reporter and editor for United Press in Nashville, Atlanta, and New York City. In 1955, Sitton joined the U.S. Information Agency as the information officer responsible for U.S. public relations in the African nation of Ghana. While in New York City on a layover to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, Sitton learned about a vacancy at The New York Times. He applied, and after a short stint as a copy editor, he was named the paper’s chief southern correspondent in May 1958. His position with the New York Times brought Sitton back to Georgia. Based back in Atlanta, he followed his passion traveling throughout the South covering the Civil Rights Movement. He quickly became regarded as the preeminent journalist for all things civil rights related. Thought leaders, politicians and other reporters on both sides of the racial divide followed his work with interest. In 1964 Newsweek called Sitton “the best daily newspaperman on the Southern scene.” Sitton returned to New York in 1964 as The New York Times national news director. In 1968, he returned to the South as editorial director of News and Observer and Raleigh Times and then as Editor of The News and Observer. He also served as Vice President and board member of The News and Observer Publishing Co. until his retirement in 1990. Claude Sitton’s commentary in his Sunday column for The News and Observer received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. He is also the recipient of the George Polk Career Award and the John Chancellor Award for journalism excellence.

View Sitton’s tribute video here.

Scott Slade has been on the air since January 1970, with all but ten of his 53 years in radio spent in Georgia. He recently stepped back from daily hosting “Atlanta’s Morning News” on WSB Radio but remains with the station for special assignments such as his “Scott Slade’s Georgia” weekly segment. He was born at Emory Hospital, grew up in Griffin, and is a Georgia State University Distinguished Alumni. He began his radio career at the age of 15, winning his first Associated Press award in 1971 while still a teen for “News Interpretation.” Slade is a rare, two-time winner of the National Association of Broadcasters Marconi Award as Best Radio Personality in America, both in large and major market categories. He shares two regional Emmy Awards as host of Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “Lawmakers” program, and numerous Murrow, AP, and GAB awards. Slade was inducted into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2023.

View Slade’s video tribute here.

John Smith, Sr. was born and raised in LaGrange, Georgia, and graduated from Morehouse College in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He briefly served in the U.S. Army and began his work with The Atlanta Inquirer in 1961, just months after Herman Russell, Jesse Hill, Julian Bond and others helped create The Inquirer to fill a void that other news outlets were not covering – the fast-moving and crucial campaigns of the burgeoning Atlanta Student Movement. John quickly became the Advertising Manager, then Vice President, and later Publisher and Chief Executive Officer. During this critical time, young people, led by students from Atlanta University, Morehouse, Spelman, Clark College and Morris Brown Colleges, organized sit-ins, freedom rides and other acts of nonviolent protests. Many were arrested to protest the Jim Crow laws and customs that segregated the U.S. along racial lines. Those participating in the Student Movement were barely able to attract even minimal news coverage. The Atlanta Inquirer began to tell the city and the world about the dangerous, courageous and history-making demonstrations. It was news that much of Atlanta did not want to hear, but it was news that powerful leaders in the city and state could not ignore, thanks to John Smith, Sr. and The Atlanta Inquirer. The Inquirer shed light on the truth and helped lead Atlanta toward integration without the violence that erupted in, and damaged, other cities across the country. Under Smith’s leadership as publisher and CEO, and as a leader in the National Newspaper Publishers’ Association, The Atlanta Inquirer continues to cover news as it did in the beginning, as the paper proclaims in its masthead, “To Seek Out the Truth and Report it Without Fear or Favor.”

View Smith’s tribute video here.

Russ Spencer has anchored the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. news on FOX 5 Atlanta since 1995. Spencer graduated from Princeton University and worked as a broadcast reporter in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Denver. In the 1980s, he temporarily left TV to move to Central America as a freelance reporter. He also briefly worked in the Middle East. Spencer relocated to Atlanta and returned to broadcast as an anchor for FOX 5 Atlanta. He initially anchored the 6 p.m. news with Brenda Wood and reported for her prime-time news program at 10 p.m. When Brenda left for WXIA-TV, Spencer and Amanda Davis started working together in a partnership that lasted 17 years. In his role, he has won 13 regional Emmy awards, including three for Best Anchor and seven for Best Newscast.

View Spencer’s video tribute here

Cynthia Tucker was born in Monroeville, Alabama, during the early years of the civil rights movement. She graduated from Auburn University, where she wrote for the student newspaper. After graduation, she went to work as a reporter with the Atlanta Journal. In 1980, Tucker left for the Philadelphia Inquirer, but she resigned to travel through Africa for six months as a freelance journalist. In 1983, she returned to the Atlanta Journal as a columnist and editorial writer, becoming associate editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution in 1986. Tucker was promoted to editorial page editor in 1992. She was the first woman and first African American to hold the position, remaining in that post — through the merger of the Journal and Constitution — for 17 years. In 2007, Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her columns and editorials in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She was also a finalist in 2004 and 2006. Her often controversial but always bold and unflinching columns and editorials, critiquing America’s post civil-rights-era policies and programs, and holding politicians and other public officials accountable – liberal and conservative, black and white – have earned Cynthia Tucker national acclaim as one of the nation’s foremost opinion writers and commentators.

View Tucker’s tribute video here.

As founder in 1970 of WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television; as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel; and then as founder of TNT, TCM, and the Cartoon Network, Robert Edward “Ted” Turner has been an innovator in media for more than forty years. Along the way he won the America’s Cup in yacht racing; purchased the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks partially to provide programming for WTCG, the name of WTBS before it became a cable channel; became one of the single largest holders of private land in the U.S.; and he contributed $1 billion to support United Nations causes, which created the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to broaden support for the UN. Turner serves as Chairman of the United Nations Foundation board of directors. In 1990, he created the Turner Foundation, which focuses on philanthropic grants in environment and population. In the same year he created Captain Planet, an environmental superhero. Turner produced two TV series with him as featured character. Born November 19, 1938, Turner’s media career started with an outdoor billboard company inherited from his father when Ted was 24 years old. Within a few years he had not only grown the billboard company, but he had purchased radio stations and then a defunct television station in Atlanta on Channel 17. On December 17, 1976, the rechristened WTCG-TV Super-Station began to broadcast to cable-TV subscribers. As Turner has said, “I was cable before cable was cool.” For all his achievements, in 1991, Turner became the first media figure to be named Time magazine’s Man of the Year, just one honor bestowed upon him throughout his productive career. Today, he is as well known for his philanthropic efforts as for his contributions to cable news.

View Turner’s tribute video here.

Janis Ware and her father, the late J. Lowell Ware (1928–1991), are widely recognized for their transformative work in journalism and community development in Atlanta. J. Lowell Ware was a pioneering Black publisher and civil rights advocate who co-founded The Atlanta Inquirer and later established The Atlanta Voice in 1966. He used journalism as a tool for empowerment, founded multiple newspapers across the South, and co-created the SUMMECH Community Land Trust to revitalize underserved neighborhoods. Janis Ware continues this legacy as Publisher of The Atlanta Voice and Executive Director of SUMMECH Development Corporation. Under her leadership, the newspaper has evolved into a modern media platform, and SUMMECH has developed over 1,800 affordable housing units in Atlanta’s Mechanicsville community. A respected civic leader, she holds several board positions and has earned numerous awards for her contributions to media and community development. Together, the Wares have championed Black voices and community progress across generations.

View Ware’s video tribute here.

Janis Ware and her father, the late J. Lowell Ware (1928–1991), are widely recognized for their transformative work in journalism and community development in Atlanta. J. Lowell Ware was a pioneering Black publisher and civil rights advocate who co-founded The Atlanta Inquirer and later established The Atlanta Voice in 1966. He used journalism as a tool for empowerment, founded multiple newspapers across the South, and co-created the SUMMECH Community Land Trust to revitalize underserved neighborhoods. Janis Ware continues this legacy as Publisher of The Atlanta Voice and Executive Director of SUMMECH Development Corporation. Under her leadership, the newspaper has evolved into a modern media platform, and SUMMECH has developed over 1,800 affordable housing units in Atlanta’s Mechanicsville community. A respected civic leader, she holds several board positions and has earned numerous awards for her contributions to media and community development. Together, the Wares have championed Black voices and community progress across generations.

View Ware’s video tribute here.

ick Williams was a multimedia journalist with deep roots in Atlanta, actively growing over his 55-year-long career in media. Williams was hired as news director by TV stations in New Haven, Baltimore, and Miami, before moving to Atlanta in 1976 to run the news operation at WXIA-TV Atlanta. In 1979, he was hired by the Atlanta Journal as city editor. During his time with the publication, Williams served as the business editor and an editorial columnist. The column ran until 1999. By this time, he was back in broadcast as the moderator of the longest-running public affairs show in Atlanta, The Georgia Gang, on Fox 5. Williams bought the Dunwoody Crier in 1996. Alongside his wife, Rebecca Chase Williams, the award-winning weekly saw major success with its local coverage of the city of Dunwoody. He retired from journalism in 2019 and passed away in 2022.

View Williams’ video tribute here

Rebecca Chase Williams, also known as the ‘founding mother of Brookhaven,’ was an Emmy-award winning reporter and devoted political figure. Upon graduating from the University of Illinois, she began her journalistic career in Atlanta as a radio reporter covering the state capitol which led to her being hired as a reporter for WXIA-TV Atlanta. Here, Williams won two regional Emmy awards for Investigative Reporting and Best Documentary. She carried out the remainder of her journalistic career at ABC News as a National Correspondent most known for her groundbreaking work in social policy. In 2015, she became the second Mayor of Brookhaven. Williams lost her battle to cancer on March 11, 2020.

View Williams’ video tribute here

As anchor of 11Alive News at 6pm, 7pm and 11pm, broadcast journalist Brenda Wood is one of Atlanta’s most prominent and trusted local news anchors. Brenda was born in Washington, D.C. in 1955. She is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Loma Linda University in Riverside, California. Upon receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication and Mass Media in 1977 Brenda began her journalism career only months later as a general assignment reporter at WAAY-TV in Huntsville, Alabama. A year later in 1978 Brenda accepted a reporting position at WSM-TV in Nashville, Tennessee, but just a few months later she returned to WAAY in Huntsville to become the weeknight anchor for the 6pm and 10pm news. She also continued general assignment reporting and hosted a half hour weekly public affairs program. In 1980 Brenda’s career took her to Memphis, Tennessee, where she spent eight years as the primetime anchor for the weekday evening newscasts at WMC-TV. She was Memphis’ first black female news anchor. In 1988, Brenda accepted the primetime anchor position at WAGATV in Atlanta, Georgia where she also reported and eventually co-produced and hosted the Emmy Award-winning news magazine show Minute by Minute. Brenda later joined WXIA-TV in Atlanta in 1997 as the evening anchor for the 6pm and 11pm weeknight newscasts, a position she currently holds. She also anchors her signature 7pm newscast The Daily 11 at 7 with Brenda Wood which features her popular and nationally recognized Last Word commentary. Brenda has also co-produced and hosted several Emmy Award-winning programs at WXIA including the series of primetime specials Journeys with Brenda Wood. Throughout her career Brenda has received numerous honors and awards, including eighteen Emmy Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Southeast Region; four awards from the Georgia Association of Broadcasters; The Gannett Broadcast Writing Award for Short Form Commentary, four awards from the National Association of Black Journalists; and six awards from the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists. In 2006 Brenda was inducted into the Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 2013 she was named Georgia Woman of the Year by the Governor’s Office of the Georgia Women’s Commission; and in 2014 was named an African American HistoryMaker and archived at the Library of Congress. Brenda has been named Who’s Who in Atlanta; awarded the NAACP Phoenix Award for “Best News Anchor,” and named “Best Local News Anchor” by Atlanta Magazine. Brenda is the mother of two adult daughters, Kristen Wood Burke and Kandis Wood Jackson.

View Wood’s tribute video here.

Judy Woodruff was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but spent most of her childhood on various military bases all over the world. She initially attended Meredith College but transferred to Duke University, where she graduated with a degree in political science.

Woodruff, now in her fifth decade as a journalist, began her career in 1970 as a reporter covering the state legislature and later as an anchor with Atlanta’s WAGA-TV.  In 1975, Woodruff joined NBC News as a correspondent, and, based in Atlanta, covered the presidential campaign of former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.  She went on to become the NBC News White House Correspondent from 1977 to 1982 and then, for a year, chief Washington Correspondent for NBC’s Today Show.

Woodruff joined PBS in 1983, where, for 10 years, she was chief Washington correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and anchor of the award-winning series Frontline with Judy Woodruff.  For 12 years, between 1993 and 2005, Woodruff was anchor and senior correspondent for CNN, and anchored the daily program, Inside Politics.  She returned to PBS in 2006, and in 2007 joined The News Hour with Jim Lehrer as senior correspondent and substitute anchor.  She was named co-anchor and co-managing editor of the nightly news broadcast, PBS NewsHour with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff, in 2013.

Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation. She serves on various boards, including the Freedom Forum, the Newseum, the Duke Endowment and the Urban Institute.

Woodruff has won many awards, including the Cine Lifetime Achievement award, the Duke Distinguished Alumni award, the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcast Journalism/Television, the University of Southern California Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Al Neuharth/University of South Dakota Award for Excellence in Journalism and the University of Oklahoma Gaylord Prize for Excellence in Journalism and Mass Communications.

Her tough, probing, insightful, illuminating and balanced reporting and interviewing continue to serve as the standards all journalists strive to meet and achieve.

View Woodruff’s tribute video here.