Six to join hall Oct. 4
Five storytellers who have demonstrated the power of journalism and one public access advocate who has ensured Hoosiers’ right to information will be honored by the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame Oct. 4 in Indianapolis.
Global correspondent Monte Hayes, photojournalist Milbert Brown, sportswriter Frederick Mitchell, broadcaster John Stehr, and network investigative reporter and editor Kathleen Johnston will join more than 200 members inducted since the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame board was created in 1966.
The board will also award a prize for journalism service to Anne O’Connor, who coordinated publication of the handbook for government transparency and public access in Indiana as the state’s first public access counselor. O’Connor will receive the John P. McMeel Distinguished Service Award.
Board members selected this year’s inductees from a group of more than 50 nominations.
“Every year I am struck by the rich quality of nominations we receive for induction to IJHF,” said board president Stephanie Salter. “Whether print, photography or television, Indiana can hold its own against any competition. This year was no exception. Our accomplished professionals truly belong in a journalism hall of fame, especially the Hoosier state’s.”
Nearly all this year’s honorees are natives of Indiana and cut their journalism teeth at newspapers and television stations here before traveling the world to expand the understanding of its people and cultures.
The 58th class of Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame includes:
Top, from left, Milbert Brown, John Stehr, Monte Hayes. Second row, from left, Kathleen Johnston, Anne O’Connor and Frederick Mitchell.
Milbert Brown
Born in Gary, photojournalist Milbert Brown was introduced to journalism when he was selected as a class reporter in second grade. He bought his first camera with money earned delivering newspapers.
As a Chicago Tribune photojournalist and picture editor, he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team for “Gateway to Gridlock.” He went on to cover the first all-race election and inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa in 1994, the Baltimore riots, the presidential campaign of Barack Obama and numerous sports championships. He left a legacy as the founder of Chicago Alliance of African American Photographers, inviting black photographers to document their communities.
Monte Hayes
A native of Lafayette, Monte Hayes worked in Kokomo, South Bend and Evansville before joining the Peace Corps in the 1960s, which only fed his interest in foreign reporting. He later joined the Associated Press, reporting from Caracas, Venezuela, Mexico City and Lima, Peru, as well as serving as foreign bureau chief in several areas and the AP World Desk in New York.
“Hayes often ventured deep into the Andes and the jungle to get exclusives for the AP on the rebels, massacres by the army and the violence carried out by cocaine smugglers. No other foreign correspondents entered these areas,” said one nominator.
Kathleen Johnston
A Gary native, Kathleen Johnston got a taste of investigative journalism at the Indianapolis News, where she exposed the City-County Council’s use of secret caucuses. She took that focus when she joined WTHR-TV in Indianapolis as a producer. There, she and a colleague won Columbia University’s Alfred I. duPont Award for “Guarding the Guardians,” which detailed the mismanagement of the fortune of Ruth Lilly, heiress of the Lilly pharmaceutical family.
Johnston went on to further success as an investigative producer at CNN, then later at CBS News’ bureau in Washington, D.C. She now leads the Michael I. Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism at Indiana University.
Frederick Mitchell
Gary native Frederick Mitchell is the only Chicago Tribune sportswriter to serve as the main beat reporter covering all three pro teams: Bulls, Cubs and Bears. He was the first African American sportswriter for the paper when he was hired in 1974. Those connections, and his own experiences as an athlete, led to 12 books, including biographies with Bears’ Gale Sayers and Richard Dent, and Cubs’ Billy Williams and Ryne Sandberg.
Mitchell once wrote he “pounded out artful prose from the driver's seat of my car, from the middle seat in row 25 of an overseas United Airlines flight, from the dank bowels of a sweaty gym and, most frequently, from the overbearing writing quarters of a stadium press box.”
John Stehr
Although he got his first taste of broadcast journalism at a Pennsylvania radio station, John Stehr met an Indianapolis audience in 1982 as a producer at WISH-TV. He made a more indelible mark when he became lead anchor of WTHR-TV in Indy in 1995. He took the station from fourth to first place, where it remained for most of his 24 years there.
He was responsible for expanding the station’s coverage of the Indianapolis 500 as well as covering national and international events that impacted Indiana residents. These included Hurricane Katrina, the canonization of Indiana’s first saint in Rome, and Barack Obama’s beginning of normalization of relations with Cuba.
Anne Mullin O’Connor
John P. McMeel Distinguished Service Award
Gov. Frank O’Bannon selected Anne Mullin O’Connor as Indiana’s first public access counselor, serving from 1998 to 2003. She left a legacy by coordinating and publishing the Handbook of Indiana’s Public Access Law. She worked to include numerous provisions throughout the Indiana Code to ensure the right of Hoosiers to view government bodies’ meetings or to inspect or copy the records of state and local government. More important, she set the tone for impartiality.
“She neither favored bureaucrats nor citizens in disputes brought before her,” said Stephen Key, retired executive director and general counsel for the Hoosier State Press Association and current member of the board of the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.
Mark your calendars:
The induction banquet is Oct. 4 in the Reilly Room of Butler University’s Atherton Union, Indianapolis.
Tickets for the luncheon will be on sale in July. Watch our website for details.
Tell us about great journalists:
To nominate journalists for the 59th class or to read about those more than 200 members of the hall of fame, visit this page.
Questions?
For additional information, contact Executive Director Larry Taylor by email, info@ijhf.org.