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NEWS SERVICES |
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News Release
| For immediate use |
March 14, 2005 -- No. 101 |
Eight honorees set for N.C. halls of fame
in journalism, broadcasting; ceremony is April 3
By JOHN KUKA
UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication
CHAPEL HILL -- Seven renowned communications professionals and one educator will be inducted into the N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame and the N.C. Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame on April 3.
The five journalism honorees are Dr. Richard Cole, dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication; Fred J. Flagler, former associate managing editor of the Winston-Salem Journal and the Twin City Sentinel; Pat Stith, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter; Jon Witherspoon, president and publisher of the Winston-Salem Journal; and posthumous recognition of Bob Quincy, former sports editor and columnist for The Charlotte Observer.
The N.C. Association of Broadcasters (NCAB) will induct three new members into its Hall of Fame: Art Cooley, owner of WHKP-AM in Hendersonville; Reynard A. "Rennie" Corley, former vice president and general manager of WXII-TV in Winston-Salem; and John Young, former associate director for the Center for Public Television.
The ceremony will be at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, with a reception at 6 p.m. and dinner at 6:45 p.m. Admission is $65. Reservations may be made by calling (919) 962-1204. The deadline to make reservations is March 21.
The N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame recognizes individuals who have made outstanding, career-long contributions to their field. Honorees must be native North Carolinians or those born elsewhere who have become distinctly identified with the state. UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication created, sponsors and houses this Hall of Fame, but honorees need not be affiliated with any university.
The new members will bring the Journalism Hall of Fame, which began in 1981, to 111 members.
The NCAB Hall of Fame, begun in 1970, will have 85 members including this year’s honorees. NCAB is a statewide association representing more than 300 broadcasting executives and business managers in industries that support broadcasting operations.
Dr. Richard Cole, who will step down as dean of UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication in June after 26 years in that post, is the school’s John Thomas Kerr Jr. distinguished professor. Under his guidance, the school attained national prominence. In virtually every national ranking, it is listed as one of the best in the nation. In the last two national accreditation reports, the school was rated as "perhaps the best in the country."
Cole also led the school to international prestige through programs in East Europe, Russia, Mexico, Cuba, Africa and the Middle East. In 1992, Cole received the Freedom Forum Medal for Distinguished Accomplishments in Journalism-Mass Communication Administration. Cole, at 50, was the youngest person to have received the award, which had been given only three times previously. An author of one book and the editor of another, he also has written articles for the field’s leading journals.
He holds a universitywide teaching excellence award at UNC and is one of the handful of people who have been president of both major national organizations in the field: the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication. For seven years, he was vice president of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications and was a vice president of the International Association for Mass Communication Research.
Fred J. Flagler joined the Winston-Salem Journal as assistant city editor in 1955. When he retired 36 years later as the paper’s associate managing editor, he had presided over coverage of race riots, struggled through the murder of a reporter and helped win the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Flagler was highly regarded for his care for reporters who worked for him.
Flagler graduated from UNC in 1946. He held positions with both the Statesville Record and the High Point Enterprise before joining the Journal. He was named managing editor of the Journal in 1962 and took the same position with the Journal’s sister publication, the Twin City Sentinel, in 1972. In the 1960s, Flagler insisted that the Journal cover the race riots in the city accurately, despite calls from local politicians to downplay the story.
The Journal’s coverage of potential strip mining in the N.C. mountains won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. And Flagler presided over the Sentinel’s newsroom on Aug. 10, 1984, when Deborah Sykes, a copy editor, did not show up for work. Sykes had been raped and murdered not far from the newsroom. Flagler led the paper through the crisis. The Sentinel shut down operations in 1985, just 36 days short of its 100th birthday. Flagler returned to the Journal as its third-ranking news executive and retired in 1991.
Pat Stith is an investigative reporter at The News and Observer. He joined the U.S. Naval Reserve at age 17 and served 20 months as a journalist aboard a heavy cruiser. After he graduated from UNC in 1966, he worked at The Charlotte News and, since 1971, at The News and Observer. He has been an investigative reporter for more than 30 years.
Stith is a former director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and was chairman of IRE’s first national conference on computer-assisted reporting. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his part in reporting "Boss Hog," a series about North Carolina’s pork revolution. "Boss Hog" also won five other national awards.
Stith was born in Gadsden, Ala., the youngest of a coal miner’s seven children. He is married to Donna Joy Hyland. They have three sons and six grandchildren.
Jon Witherspoon is president and publisher of the Winston-Salem Journal. Witherspoon went to work part-time as an obit writer and copy boy at the Journal in 1961 while attending Wake Forest University. With few exceptions, he has been at the Journal ever since. He spent time in a variety of positions including reporter, copy editor, news editor, human resources director, business manager and general manager.
He assumed his current responsibilities in January 1994. Witherspoon worked on the Journal’s news staff when it won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. A leader in the profession, he was president of the N.C. Press Association in 1998 when the association secured a "shield law" from the N.C. General Assembly to protect reporters from having to reveal sources except under the narrowest circumstances.
Witherspoon holds a bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He served in the U.S. Army from 1965 to 1967, including a tour in Vietnam, and he was associate publisher of several weekly newspapers in Maryland in the mid-1970s.
He is divorced and has two sons and four grandchildren.
Bob Quincy, a five-time winner of the N.C. Sportswriter of the Year award, was known for his love of N.C. sports and for his storytelling ability.
Quincy attended UNC. His studies were interrupted by World War II. During the war, Quincy flew 30 combat missions over Europe in a B-17 bomber. After Quincy returned from the war, he graduated in 1947 and joined the sports staff of the Rocky Mount Telegram. From 1948 through 1962, Quincy worked as a sportswriter and then sports editor for The Charlotte News. He returned to UNC in 1962 and served as the university’s sports information director.
In 1966, Quincy returned to Charlotte to work in radio and television. He was hired as a sports columnist for The Charlotte Observer in 1971, where he remained until his death in 1984. He also wrote two books. Quincy was an avid sportsman, and the Charlotte Sportsman Club’s Sportsman of the Year award is named for him. The Bob Quincy Memorial Scholarship in UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication is one of the school’s largest.
Quincy and his wife, Kathleen, had six children.
Art Cooley began his broadcast career at WHKP-AM 1450 in Hendersonville in 1957. His first assignment in broadcasting was that of salesman, followed quickly by sales manager and general manager.
In 1969, Cooley was one of the founding owners of Cablevision Inc., a cable television company that was later sold to Sullivan Cable and currently operates in Hendersonville as Mediacom Cable TV. Cooley appealed to the Federal Communications Commission to increase the power of the 7,800-watt WHKP-FM to 100,000 watts in 1979. With this increase in power, call letters were changed to WKIT-FM with a country format that served a wide western North Carolina and upper South Carolina area. The station was sold in 1985 and became WMYI-FM, now with offices and studios in Greenville, S.C.
In 1990, Cooley and fellow employees purchased WHKP-AM. WHKP is now in its 58th year of broadcasting. Cooley served on the board of directors of the NCAB and has been active in many civic organizations, including president of the Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce and the Hendersonville Country Club. His daughters, Karen and Kim, have joined Cooley in operating WHKP.
Rennie Corley served as vice president and general manager of WXII-TV in Winston-Salem from 1979 until his retirement in 2000. A native of North Augusta, S.C., he spent 40 years at seven television stations. During that time he was an active member of many communications and civic organizations. He is a graduate of Clemson University.
Corley was director and then president of the NCAB in 1992. He received association’s Distinguished Service Award in 1995. He was active in the National Association of Broadcasters.
Corley’s civic activities included memberships in Leadership Winston-Salem and the Downtown (Winston-Salem) Rotary Club. He also served on the board of directors of the March of Dimes, the Winston-Salem Retail Merchants Association, Goodwill Industries and the Appalachian State University Board of Business Advisors for Broadcasting.
Corley and his wife, Carolee, now live in Florida.
John Young developed an interest in radio broadcasting as a child and followed his passion for radio in 1939 when he enrolled as a student in UNC’s department of radio, television and motion pictures.
World War II interrupted his educational plans, placing him in the U.S. Navy in 1941, where he remained for more than four years. In 1943, Young took part in the invasion of Normandy. His vessel landed at Omaha Beach. After the war, Young continued his education in Chapel Hill, completing his studies in 1947. He later received his master’s degree in communication from Northwestern University.
Young returned to UNC in the early 1950s. He and a group of volunteer students put the original WUNC-FM, a 10-watt educational FM radio station, on the air. WUNC-TV went on the air Jan. 8, 1955, and Young soon became director of television for the Chapel Hill studio.
In 1980, he joined the Center for Public Television as associate director and continued there until his retirement in 1986. During his tenure at WUNC-TV, Young persuaded then-University of North Carolina President William Friday to host a weekly program to be called "North Carolina People" and pioneered live coverage by UNC-TV of all sessions of the state legislature and gubernatorial statewide addresses.
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School of Journalism and Mass Communication contact: John Kuka, (919) 966-3323 or jkuka@unc.edu
