The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame has selected six people to be inducted during a ceremony April 26 in recognition of their distinguished careers in newspaper or broadcast journalism or journalism education.
Those to be inducted into the Hall of Fame during the ceremony at Indiana University are:
• Walt Bogdanich, who grew up in Gary and is a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his investigative journalism. Bogdanich graduated from Gary’s Wallace High School and has since gone on to be an investigative producer for “60 Minutes” and ABC News, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and a member of The New York Times’ investigations desk since 2001.
• Ruth Chin, a pioneering Chinese-American photojournalist whose career began in 1946 at her hometown Muncie Star at a time when few newspapers had female staff photographers. She soon was winning top state photography awards and became the first female photographer to cover the state high school basketball finals. Chin started her own photography studio in the 1950s.
• Earleen Fisher, who grew up in Milford and was a reporter, editor and overseas bureau chief with The Associated Press for more than 30 years. Fisher joined the AP soon after graduating from Indiana University in 1968. She moved to Egypt as a freelance writer in 1977, then rejoining the AP a few years later. She was a reporter in Beirut and Tel Aviv before becoming the AP’s bureau chief in New Delhi and later chief of Middle East Services.
• The late Lillian Thomas Fox, who is regarded as the first African-American writer for a historically white newspaper in the state. Fox moved to Indianapolis in the 1880s and became a correspondent for the Freeman, a nationally prominent black newspaper. During 1900-1914 she wrote columns and feature stories about the activities of black Hoosiers for The Indianapolis News. She died in 1917.
• Jim Hetherington, an Indiana television and newspaper journalist and book author. Hetherington is an Indianapolis native who graduated from Indiana University. He was an editor and writer at the Louisville Times and the Indianapolis Times. He then moved to broadcast journalism in 1963 at WFBM-TV of Indianapolis (now WRTV), where he wrote and produced documentaries and daily editorials.
• James Alexander Thom, who began his writing career as a newspaper journalist and has used extensive researching to author 10 historical fiction novels and one non-fiction book. Thom is an Owen County native and 1961 graduate of Butler University. He worked at The Indianapolis Star as a reporter and editor, then was an editor and columnist for the Saturday Evening Post and a freelance writer for the Washington Post and National Geographic. He was an Indiana University journalism instructor before turning to book writing full time.
Housed at Indiana University’s School of Journalism, the Hall of Fame will conduct its induction ceremony at the Indiana Memorial Union in Bloomington. Tickets for the luncheon ceremony are $40. For more information, email the Hall of Fame at ijhf@indiana.edu.
For information on previous inductees and how to nominate someone for induction, visit the Hall of Fame’s website at Indianajournalismhof.org.
