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Seven communications luminaries with ties to North Carolina will be inducted into the North Carolina Halls of Fame in Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations during an April 15 ceremony in Chapel Hill.

Seven communications luminaries with ties to North Carolina will be inducted into the North Carolina Halls of Fame in Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations during an April 15 ceremony in Chapel Hill.

The halls of fame, based in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, honor individuals who have made outstanding, career-long contributions to their fields. Honorees must be native North Carolinians or distinctly identified with the state.

The inductions will be held April 15 in the Carolina Inn’s Hill Ballroom. Tickets to the 5:30 p.m. reception, 6:15 p.m. dinner and ceremony are $75 per person. Contact Leslie Rountree at les_rountree@email.unc.edu or (919) 962-3037 by April 6 for reservations and more information.

The five inductees into the Journalism Hall of Fame are:

  • Frank Daniels III, a Raleigh native now living in Nashville, Tenn., the former vice president and executive editor of The (Raleigh) News & Observer, the newspaper his family founded. Under his leadership, The N&O won many industry awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and became a leader in the transition to digital newsrooms and Internet publishing including launching one of the first Internet newspapers, nando.net, in 1993.
  • Bill Green, a Zebulon native now living in Durham, former ombudsman for The Washington Post, former senior assistant to U.S. Sen. Terry Sanford and former vice president of university relations at Duke University. He also is a decorated World War II pilot who flew reconnaissance missions in Italy for the U.S. Air Force. He began his career as a reporter for the Durham Sun and went on to become editor of the Morganton News Herald and the Shelby Daily Star. He later worked for the U.S. Information Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
  • Karen L. Parker of Winston-Salem, the first African-American woman to earn an undergraduate degree from UNC. As a student, she was editor of the UNC Journalist and was inducted into the Order of the Valkyries. Parker was a career copy editor. She worked for 15 years for the Los Angeles Times, where she became Sunday News Editor. Her other newspaper experience includes the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Winston-Salem Journal, from which she retired in 2010.
  • John Skipper, a Lexington native now living in Bristol, Conn., ESPN president and co-chairman of Disney Media Networks. In his 14 years with ESPN, he has been a key architect of the company’s explosive growth. Skipper played leadership roles overseeing the company’s television, digital, print and advertising sales initiatives, as well as ESPN’s focus on brand extensions, bringing to life the company’s “best available screen” philosophy across more platforms and with more wide-ranging major rights agreements than at any time since ESPN’s launch in 1979.
  • Donald Shaw of Chapel Hill, a communication historian and theorist, journalism professor, retired U.S. Army Reserve officer and writer who taught at the UNC journalism school since 1966. He is Kenan Professor emeritus at the school. As a scholar he is best known for his pioneering work, with Max McCombs of the University of Texas, about the agenda-setting function of the press, and for his studies of 19th and 20th century American and Southern press history.

 

Gary Pearce of Raleigh, the Public Relations Hall of Fame inductee, has been a journalist, governor’s press secretary, political consultant, author, blogger, commentator and public affairs consultant. He was a key adviser to former Gov. Jim Hunt through Hunt’s four terms and four campaigns. He began as Hunt’s press secretary and speechwriter, and later became his chief political strategist and policy adviser. Pearce authored “Jim Hunt: A Biography” in 2010, recounting Hunt’s life and career, and the economic, social and political changes that have transformed North Carolina since 1950. In 1985, Pearce founded Pearce Research Associates, a strategic communications consulting firm.

Walker Smith of Atlanta, the Advertising Hall of Fame inductee, is the executive chairman of The Futures Company, a global foresights and futures research consultancy. He has been described by Fortune magazine as “one of America’s leading analysts on consumer trends.” He spent 17 years at Yankelovich, a market research company known for the Yankelovich MONITOR, a study of consumer values, motivations and attitudes conducted annually since 1971. Smith has co-authored four books and writes a column on marketing strategy for Marketing Management magazine. Smith also blogs for Branding Strategy Insider and periodically writes about baby boomers for The Huffington Post.

For more information on each inductee, see http://www.jomc.unc.edu/homepage-news-slot-23-merged/nc-journalism-advertising-and-public-relations-halls-of-fame-to-induct-seven-new-members-april-15.

Photos: Daniels, http://jomc.unc.edu/images/frankdanielsiiihof.jpg
Green, http://jomc.unc.edu/images/billgreenhof.jpg
Parker, http://jomc.unc.edu/images/karenparker.jpg
Pearce, http://jomc.unc.edu/images/garypearcehof.jpg
Shaw, http://jomc.unc.edu/images/donshawhof.jpg
Skipper, http://jomc.unc.edu/images/johnskipper.jpg
Smith, http://jomc.unc.edu/images/jwalkersmithhof.jpg

School of Journalism and Mass Communication contact: Kyle York, (919) 966-3323, sky@unc.edu

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