Watch: N.C. Halls of Fame in Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations induct nine new members
The N.C. Halls of Fame in Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations inducted nine new members during an April 21 ceremony at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill. Two emerging leaders in their fields were recognized with the Next Generation Leadership Award given by the Halls of Fame. The 2013 induction ceremony was presented by Dow Jones.
View individual inductions here.
The honorees include:
- Don Baer (public relations)
Chair and CEO of Burson-Marsteller, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton - Jane Brown (journalism)
Nationally renowned scholar for research into media’s influence on teens - Chris Hondros (journalism, posthumous)
Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist who covered world conflicts - Greg Johnson (next generation leadership)
President of BooneOakley advertising and digital agency - Jason Kilar (advertising)
Former CEO of Hulu, former senior vice president at Amazon.com - Alan Murray (journalism)
President of Pew Research Center, former Wall Street Journal Washington bureau chief, deputy managing editor and executive editor online - Dwane Powell (journalism)
Nationally-syndicated editorial cartoonist for The News & Observer, contributed to N&O series that won 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service - Wyndham Robertson (journalism)
Fortune magazine editor specializing in financial and technology subjects for 25 years and former UNC system vice president for communications - Doug Smith (journalism)
Reporter, editor and columnist for The Charlotte Observer for more than four decades - Michael Steel (next generation leadership)
Press secretary for U.S. House Speaker John Boehner - Stacy Wall (advertising)
Commercial director, winner of Directors Guild Of America Commercials Award
Contact Megan Garrett at megan.garrett@unc.edu or 919.962.6881 for more information.
The Halls of Fame are based in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, and they honor individuals who have made outstanding, career-long contributions to their fields. Honorees must be native North Carolinians, or must be distinctly identified with the state.
Don Baer, public relations inductee, is worldwide chair and CEO of the strategic communications firm Burson-Marsteller and chairman of the research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland.
He has been a member of Burson-Marsteller’s global senior management team since 2008, while also leading major client engagements for top technology, communications and media companies. From 1998 to 2007, he helped lead global media company Discovery Communications as senior executive vice president for strategy and development.
From 1994-98, Baer was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. As White House director of strategic planning and communications and, as chief speechwriter, he played a key role in the Clinton Presidency, including the 1996 re-election. From 1985-93, Baer was a journalist at U.S. News and World Report, where he covered politics and the White House and, as an assistant managing editor, oversaw national and international coverage. In the 1980s, Baer was a media lawyer at New York’s Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler.
He serves on the board of directors of PBS, the Urban Institute and the News Literacy Project, among others. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the UNC and earned a master's degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Jane Brown, a journalism inductee, retired as a professor from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media in December 2012 after a career that spanned more than 30 years researching media and their affects on adolescent health.
She is the co-editor or co-authors of five books on adolescents’ health and the media, including “Sexual Teens, Sexual Media: Investigating Media’s Influence on Adolescent Sexuality” (2002), “Media, Sex and the Adolescent” (1992) and “The Media, Social Science and Social Policy for Children” (1985). She also is author of more than 60 book chapters and articles.
She has served on the boards of Advocates for Youth, the Trojan Sexual Health Advisory Committee, the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Children, Youth and Families and the research advisory board of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
While at UNC, Brown received the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award in 2011, the Faculty to Faculty Mentoring Award in 2008, the General Alumni Association’s Faculty Service Award in 2006, the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award for service to the University in 2002 and the Outstanding Faculty/Staff Woman Award given by the Women’s Issues Network and the Carolina Women’s Center in 1999, among many others. She has chaired more than 30 doctoral committees, 35 master’s committees and seven undergraduate honors committees.
Chris Hondros, a posthumous journalism inductee, was a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist.
He covered most of the world’s major conflicts since the late 1990s, including conflicts in Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the West Bank, Iraq and Liberia. His work appeared on the covers of publications that included Newsweek, The Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.
Hondros received dozens of awards, including multiple honors from World Press Photo in Amsterdam, the International Pictures of the Year competition, the Vias Pour L’Image in France and the John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club. In 2004, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Spot News Photography for his work in Liberia, and in 2006, he won the Robert Capa Gold Medal, war photography’s highest honor for his work in Iraq.
He was born in New York to immigrant Greek and German parents and moved to North Carolina as a child. Hondros earned a degree from North Carolina State University and a master’s degree from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communications. He was killed while on assignment in Libya on April 20, 2011.
Greg Johnson, a Next Generation Leadership Award winner, is president of BooneOakley Advertising in Charlotte, where he oversees operations, account services, business development and strategic planning.
He began his career at J. Walter Thompson as a media planner. He worked at Saatchi & Saatchi on the Procter and Gamble account. Johnson has also worked with many other Fortune 500 companies including Kodak, Johnson & Johnson, Reynolds Metals and Warner Lambert — now Pfizer.
He also served as marketing director and was a founding team member of the Jordan Brand, a subsidiary of Nike. Johnson helped created a marketing platform to transition Michael Jordan and his shoe, the Air Jordan, into one of the most successful and powerful sport brands. While marketing director, the brand grew from approximately $100 million to $600 million globally.
Johnson is involved in community service activities that include serving on the boards of the University YMCA in Charlotte and Youniversity Drive, a support and mentoring organization for first-generation college students. He also is an active part of the leadership team at Grace Covenant Church in Cornelius, N.C. Johnson holds an M.A. in Theology from Western Seminary and a B.A. in journalism and mass communication from UNC.
Jason Kilar, an advertising honoree, is the former CEO of Hulu, an online TV service with a mission to help people find and enjoy the world's premium content when, where and how they want it.
Under Kilar’s leadership since the formative days of the venture in 2007, Hulu has grown to include more than 400 professional content providers, 30 million unique monthly users, $700 million in annual revenue and more than 3 million paying subscribers.
Hulu ‘s 2012 revenue was 65 percent higher than the prior year. It currently operates services in the U.S. and Japanese markets.
Kilar joined Hulu after nearly a decade at Amazon.com, where he served in a variety of key leadership roles. After writing the original business plan for Amazon's entry into the video business, he ultimately became vice president and general manager of its North American media businesses, which included the company's books, music and video categories. He later served as senior vice president for worldwide application software, leading an organization of technologists to innovate for merchants and consumers via Amazon's websites across the globe.
Kilar began his career with The Walt Disney Company after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from UNC with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication and business administration – and earning an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.
He serves on the board of Brighter, Management Leadership for Tomorrow, and he is on the executive committee of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Fortune Magazine twice named Kilar to their 40 under 40 global business leaders list. Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone Magazine and The Hollywood Reporter have honored him for the positive impact he and his team are having on the emerging digital media landscape.
Alan Murray, a journalism inductee, is the president of the Pew Research Center. He leads in setting the strategic direction of Pew Research, in consultation with Pew Research leadership, its board and The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Murray was previously deputy managing editor and executive editor, online, for The Wall Street Journal.
He previously served as CNBC’s Washington, D.C., bureau chief and was co-host of “Capital Report with Alan Murray and Gloria Borger.”
While working at CNBC, he wrote the Journal’s weekly “Political Capital” column. Prior to that, he spent a decade as the Washington bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.
Murray received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.
Dwane Powell, a journalism inductee, became The (Raleigh) News & Observer’s editorial cartoonist in 1975.
His syndicated cartoons led to awards including the National Headliner Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, the Plott Hound Award, the Raleigh Medal of Arts Award and a Distinguished Alumnus award from the University of Arkansas.
Three compilations of his work have been published, and his body of work resides in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC’s Wilson Library. He retired from the N&O in 2009.
He grew up on a farm in Southeast Arkansas and majored in agri-business, but had his first editorial cartoon published for the newspaper in his college town and thus began his cartooning career. Before coming to Raleigh, Powell worked at newspapers in Hot Springs, Ark., San Antonio and Cincinnati.
Wyndham Robertson, a journalism inductee, is the former assistant managing editor of Fortune magazine and former business editor of Time magazine.
After graduating from Hollins College with an economics degree, Robertson worked as a junior analyst in the Economics Department of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey before joining Fortune as a researcher and reporter in 1961. She was elected to Fortune’s board of editors in 1974 and was named assistant managing editor in 1981. She served as business editor of Time magazine from 1982-83 as part of an experimental program in which six Time Inc. editors temporarily switched magazines.
Robertson spent the last decade of her career as the vice president for communications of the 16-campus University of North Carolina system. She serves on boards that include the Media General Board of Directors, the Carolina Performing Arts national advisory board and the Full Frame Documentary Festival executive board, among others.
Her work has been honored with awards that include the Gerald M. Loeb Achievement Award for Distinguished Writing on Investment, Finance and Business and the American Journalism Historians Association Award for Breaking Gender Barriers in Journalism and Communication, among others.
Doug Smith, a journalism inductee, began his career in 1965 as a part-time reporter for The Raleigh Times while completing his senior year at UNC. He earned a journalism degree in 1966.
During his 43-plus years at The Times, The Charlotte News, The Wichita Eagle and The Charlotte Observer, he went from chasing sirens, burning shoe leather and pounding a manual typewriter to blogging, making videos and posting breaking news to the Web.
At The Observer, Smith was a household name for nearly two decades as readers embraced his columns and shared his passion for breaking news, getting the story right and connecting Charlotte’s past and present.
During the boom years of the mid 2000s, he started a new weekly column called The Next Big Thing – a big-picture, bird’s-eye look at the Charlotte region’s emerging trends in commercial and residential development. He combined the print column with videos and a blog that routinely ranked in the daily top 10 for hits on CharlotteObserver.com. The Next Big Thing feature was cited as a reason The Observer business department won the coveted General Excellence award in 2008 from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
Michael Steel, a Next Generation Leadership Award winner, is the press secretary for Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner.
During the 2012 Presidential election campaign, he served as press secretary to Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, and traveled with him throughout the campaign.
Steel has worked for Rep. Boehner since February of 2008. In the Speaker’s office, Steel works with the Capitol Hill and national press corps, and helps develop and coordinate communications for House Republicans. According to The Washington Post, Steel “has a powerful ability to shape the House GOP message.”
Recently, National Journal included Steel on its annual “35 and Under Power Set” for being one of "Washington's next generation power players," and Buzzfeed dubbed him “one of the people running Washington.”
Prior to working for Boehner, Steel was the communications director for Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Republican Policy Committee, and press secretary for then-Reps. Jim McCrery of Louisiana and John Shaddegg of Arizona. He has also volunteered for a number of political campaigns, including Governor Mitt Romney’s 2008 primary campaign and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn’s first senate race.
Before going to Capitol Hill, Steel was a journalist at National Journal, covering politics and policy in Washington, D.C. He also interned for The Herald Sun in Durham, N.C., the Washington bureau of The Detroit News and National Review Online.
He graduated from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media in 1999, and received a master’s from Columbia University in 2003.
Stacy Wall, an advertising inductee, is one of the world’s foremost commercial advertisement directors. He is a recipient of the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in TV Commercials.
After graduating from UNC, Wall spent nine years at Wieden+Kennedy as a copywriter and creative director for the Nike and ESPN accounts.
In 2001, he transitioned to directing commercials for products and companies that include Nike, Adidas, T-Mobile and Intel, among many others.
Wall launched the Imperial Woodpecker production company in 2009.