The Atlanta Press Club next month is inducting into its Hall of Fame “All Things Considered” co-host Mary Louise Kelly, the late WSB-TV anchor Jovita Moore and Fox 5 evening anchor Russ Spencer.
This 12th induction class also includes Lorenzo “Lo” Jelks, the first Black broadcast reporter on Atlanta TV, and the power couple Dick Williams, creator of “The Georgia Gang” who died earlier this year, and his wife and former ABC News reporter Rebecca Chase Williams, who died in 2020.
The ceremony will be held Thursday, Nov. 10, at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre with tickets available at atlantapressclub.org.
Kelly, a Georgia native, worked at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the early 1990s out of college as a political reporter before entering public radio. At National Public Radio, she specialized in covering security issues and took over as a host of “All Things Considered” in 2018.
Moore, a New York native who died last year of an aggressive brain cancer, worked at WSB-TV for 23 years, including 10 years as a decorated and beloved primary evening anchor.
Spencer, who grew up in the Philadelphia area, joined Fox 5 (WAGA-TV) in 1995 and has been an evening anchor there ever since, winning multiple Southeast Emmys.
Jelks, who graduated Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), joined WSB-TV in 1967 as its first Black reporter and stayed in broadcast TV for nearly a decade before creating WAUC-AM, a station showcasing historically Black colleges and universities and the AUC Digest, a newspaper serving the Atlanta University Center.
>>RELATED: Our profile of Jelks
Dick Williams, a Kansas City native, came to Atlanta in 1976 as a news director at WXIA-TV, wrote editorials and columns at the Atlanta Journal and started the weekly panel show “The Georgia Gang,” now a mainstay on Fox 5. Later in his career, he owned local newspaper the Dunwoody Crier.
His wife Rebecca Chase Williams, an award-winning national reporter for ABC News for more than 20 years, helped turn Brookhaven into a city, becoming a city council member, then mayor.
DISCLOSURE: I am on the board of The Atlanta Press Club
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