Pulitzer Prize winners, influential newspaper owners, a groundbreaking media personality and a popular University of Georgia journalism professor are among the honorees The Atlanta Press Club plans to induct into its Hall of Fame in October.
The 2012 inductees include seven high-profile journalists who helped shape metro Atlanta’s media landscape.
Honorees include the late Ohio Gov. James M. Cox and his daughters, Anne Cox Chambers and the late Barbara Cox Anthony. They are being recognized for their leadership of Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, which owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a range of other media outlets.
Also among the inductees: Ralph McGill, the legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Atlanta Constitution, who will be recognized posthumously for his role as a leading voice for moderation and racial tolerance in the South during the Civil Rights Era. He died in 1969.
Xernona Clayton, a former reporter for the Atlanta Voice who was the first black woman in the South to host her own regularly-scheduled talk show, is also being inducted. She later founded the Trumpet Awards.
Conrad Fink, a UGA journalism professor who died earlier this year, will receive a posthumous award recognizing him for influencing hundreds of journalists across the globe, including many members of today’s Atlanta Press Club. Fink had a long career with The Associated Press before joining UGA’s faculty.
Another veteran journalist who will be honored is George Goodwin, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his Atlanta Journal investigation into voter fraud in rural Telfair County. He later became a respected public relations executive.
The Hall of Fame was launched in 2011, when sports columnist Furman Bisher, editor Henry W. Grady and media titan Ted Turner were among the inaugural inductees.
