Atlanta Press Club to honor city’s top journalists Sept. 22

By Maria Saporta
Friday, May 20, 2011

The Atlanta Press Club, which is launching a Hall of Fame for renowned journalists and media professionals, is announcing its first class of inductees.

The 2011 Hall of Fame inductees will be:

• Ted Turner, the media titan who is best known as the founder of CNN and Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

• Furman Bisher, the noted sportswriter, editor and author who began his career in 1938 and joined The Atlanta Constitution in 1950.

• Tom Johnson, president of CNN in the 1990s and former publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

• John Pruitt, longtime anchor of Channel 2 Action News on WSB-TV and 11Alive News on WXIA-TV, who retired at the end of 2010.

• Alexis Scott and the Scott family, publishers of the Atlanta Daily World, the city’s respected and pioneering African-American newspaper founded in 1928.

• Henry Grady (1850-1889), the legendary editor of The Atlanta Constitution (the inaugural posthumous award).

Turner and Bisher are past recipients of the Atlanta Press Club Lifetime of Achievement award and are being inducted in the inaugural Hall of Fame class as a result of that honor.

“The Atlanta Press Club is honored to include these prestigious and influential trailblazers, who helped set the standard for journalism in Georgia and across the nation, in our 2011 Hall of Fame class,” said Jon Shirek, a WXIA-TV reporter who is chairing the Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame committee, in a statement. “We will use proceeds from the event to provide scholarships for college and university students studying journalism to guarantee that a new generation will keep alive the high standards of our profession.”

The honorees will be inducted at a dinner on Sept. 22 at the InterContinental Buckhead. Tickets are $75 for Atlanta Press Club members and $100 for nonmembers.

Event sponsors include Atlanta Business Chronicle, Cox Media Group Inc., Georgia State University, Iconologic and Wells Fargo & Co. Please contact (404) 57-PRESS (577-7377) for information on tickets and other sponsorship opportunities.

The Atlanta Press Club, founded in 1964, is one of the largest professional journalism associations in the country. This is the first time the Atlanta Press Club has established a Hall of Fame to honor the top journalists and media professionals in Georgia.

The membership encompasses Atlanta’s burgeoning media community. More than half the club’s 600 members are working journalists. Please visit www.atlantapressclub.org for more information.

Maria Saporta serves on the board of the Atlanta Press Club and is a member of the Hall of Fame committee.