Family, supporters
accept awards at Aug. 11 ceremony in Murfreesboro
The two generations of publishers
— former state Rep. John Bragg and his father Minor Elam Bragg — were
among nine posthumous inductees to be honored at this year’s ceremony, held
Tuesday afternoon at the Embassy Suites Hotel and Conference Center in
Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
So perhaps it was fitting that two
more generations of Braggs — Tommy and his adult children John III and Beth —
attended the occasion to recognize their ancestors’ legacy. Minor Bragg and
John Bragg left their marks on journalism through the elder’s creation and
stewardship of the Cannon Courier and Rutherford Courier and the younger’s work
to develop the state’s open meetings laws as a state lawmaker.
“If my dad taught me about public
service, my granddad and my grandma taught me about business, how to make
living,” Tommy Bragg said in accepting his grandfather’s award. “It’s a
pleasure to accept this on behalf of ‘Paw Paw.’ I’m greatly honored (and) I
know my family is.”
This was the third class of inductees
and first in which all recipients were recognized posthumously.
The ceremony came in conjunction with the 67th annual Tennessee Association of
Broadcasters conference.
WSMV-TV longtime news anchor Demetria
Kalodimos emceed the program, with family and friends of the honorees on hand
to accept the awards.
Another inductee with a strong local
connection was iconic sports journalist Grantland Rice, who was born in
Murfreesboro and worked at regional newspapers including The Nashville
Tennessean before moving to New York to continue a legendary career as a
syndicated columnist.
Accepting the award on his behalf was
longtime former Tennessean sports writer and columnist Joe Biddle, who noted
that Rice was “ahead of his time” and whose first name dons the masthead of an
ESPN-affiliated website today, a testament to his lasting influence.
“I’m honored to even be associated
with Grantland Rice,” Biddle said. “He put sports writing on the map” during
the first half of the 20th century and was often referred to as the
dean of sports writing in America.
The Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame
is an independent partner with MTSU’s College of Mass Communication, which
houses the hall in its Center for Innovation in Media inside the Bragg Mass
Communication Building on the MTSU campus. Journalism professor Dr. Larry
Burriss is current president of the hall.
MTSU Mass Communication Dean Ken
Paulson told the crowd that his college is creating a multimedia display that
will be located in the College of Mass Communication where visitors can find
information about all of the hall inductees since its inception.
“It is so important that our students
understand those who have gone before them, those who have made a difference,”
Paulson said. “These are the heroes of Tennessee journalism, men and women who
have made a real difference in their communities.”
Other members of the 2015 class included:
• Kent Flanagan, a native Texan and
veteran Associated Press executive who practiced journalism on various
platforms. Accepting the award on his behalf was his widow, Janet Flanagan.
Also attending the ceremony was current Tennessee AP bureau chief Adam Yeomans.
Kalodimos announced that a
scholarship fund has been established in Flanagan’s memory through the
Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to create the Kent Flanagan Memorial
Scholarship. The fund has raised $2,800 thus far, with a goal of at least
$10,000 to endow the scholarship for an annual award to a journalism student.
Donations can be made online at www.cfmt.org.
In accepting the award, Janet
Flanagan said her late husband had two goals in life: to be a good man and to
be a good journalist.
“And he succeeded at both,” she said.
“He loved journalism … He loved mentoring the people that he worked with. He
loved teaching the students at MTSU.”
Flanagan served as
journalist-in-residence for four years at MTSU from 2005 to 2009.
• Jack Knox, a nationally recognized
editorial cartoonist who practiced his wit and biting commentary in three of the
state’s four largest cities. Accepting the award on his behalf was one of his
sons, Brit Knox.
Brit Knox said his mother, Edit,
“jokingly” suggested his then 21-year-old father pick up drawing cartoons
during the Great Depression when the family’s coffee business was struggling.
Knox’s wife stumbled upon a correspondence course on cartooning that Jack Knox
had purchased while in junior high. The family estimates that Knox drew over
12,000 cartoons during his four decades plus of drawing editorial cartoons.
“He met, knew and corresponded with
seven presidents,” Brit Knox told the crowd. “When he was just 23 years old, he
and another cartoonist, Joe Parrish, met personally with FDR in the White
House. Also, he had cartoons that hung in the White House during the Kennedy
Administration. …
“Thank you for honoring our father …
for his contribution to Tennessee journalism.”
• Roy McDonald, whose bigger-city
publishing career traces back to an advertising sheet he started to promote his
grocery business in Chattanooga. Accepting the award on his behalf was his
grandson, Roy McDonald Exum.
Exum lauded his grandfather as “the
most innovative guy I’ve ever been around” because of the diversity of
interests in which he excelled. Exum noted that McDonald was in numerous halls
of fame, ranging from insurance to hospitals to cattle to now, journalism.
McDonald started a grocery chain
flier that eventually evolved into the Chattanooga News-Free Press and a direct
competitor to the more established Chattanooga Times before the two papers
merged decades later. The News-Free Press was able to “beat” the Times by
tapping into people’s thrill of seeing a picture of themselves in print.
“We would take 1,500 pictures a week.
We took a picture of anything that moved,” Exum said, drawing chuckles from the
crowd. “He (McDonald) was a master innovator. He loved to compete. He loved to
do it the right way.
“My grandfather would deeply, deeply
love this.”
• Bob Parkins, a small-town dairyman
who grew his rural West Tennessee newspaper from scratch through merger.
Accepting the award on his behalf was his son, Victor Parkins, and widow,
Dorris Parkins.
Bob Parkins served as owner, publisher
and editor of the paper until his death in 2008, with his wife now serving as
publisher and his son as the paper’s editor.
“He was a true newspaper man at heart,”
said Victor Parkins, who fondly recalled how his mom and dad juggled the
responsibilities of running a weekly newspaper with the need to milk 300 dairy
cows every day.
“He was a true journalist and he
loved to write,” added Dorris Parkins. “We had an old typewriter, and if he
wasn’t in the barn he was working on a story.”
• John N. Popham III, a native
Virginian who landed in Tennessee to cover the South and civil rights for The
New York Times and stayed. Accepting the award on his behalf was his son, John
Popham IV.
He pointed out an Associated Press
photo on display to the side of the podium showing his father during his
service in World War II. His father, a Marine captain and war correspondent,
was kneeling in prayer at Catholic services held for native Chamorros at a
Marine Civil Affairs Internment Camp on the Japanese island of Saipan.
His son said the photo reflected the
three aspects of his life, other than family, that were probably most important
to him: faith, military service and journalism.
“My father would have been
particularly thrilled, honored and humbled to receive this award because he
loved journalism,” the younger Popham said. “He believed journalism was a
profession, a public trust … and believed that newspapers had a mandatory role
in educating the citizenry.”
• Drue Smith, a trailblazing woman
who started in newspapers before switching to become a respected and colorful
broadcast political reporter. Accepting the award on her behalf was her
daughter, Drucilla Smith Fuller.
Dressed in hot pink in honor of her
mother’s colorful wardrobe, Fuller expressed thanks that her late mother was
being inducted into the hall in the same class at Roy McDonald, who gave Smith
her first job as a columnist in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“She was a trailblazer for women,”
Fuller said, explaining how the respect Smith cultivated as a journalist allowed
her to fight for and win access for women to previously male-only private clubs
around Nashville. “She certainly had so many firsts.”
Fuller noted that Smith also had a
close connection to another Class of 2015 inductee through her work as a radio correspondent
at the State Capitol.
“A lot of what she did on Capitol
Hill, her informant was often John Bragg, who was a wonderful friend of hers
always,” Fuller said.
Hall of Fame inductees can include
reporters, writers, editors, publishers, news directors and other managers, as
well as those who have excelled in advertising or public relations and
journalism, advertising and PR education.
The Hall of Fame’s bylaws note that
its inductees represent “those who have made significant and substantial contributions
to the journalism profession.” Honorees may be living or deceased, native
Tennesseans who spent much of their career in state or out of state, or
non-natives who spent a substantial part of their career in Tennessee.
For more information about the
Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame, visit its website at http://www.tnjournalismhof.org
or contact Hooper Penuel, TJHOF secretary, at 615-347-1672.
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Below are more detailed
biographies of the 2015 honorees in alphabetical order:
John Thomas Bragg
John Bragg (1918-2004)
came from a newspaper family that owned the Cannon Courier and later
started the Rutherford Courier, but distinguished himself in another form of
public service as a legislative reformer and expert in government finance
during a 30-year career in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Born in
Woodbury in 1918, he graduated from what is now MTSU in 1940 with a degree in
social studies. He was student body president and editor of the student newspaper,
Sidelines. Bragg did graduate work in history at the University of Tennessee
and worked briefly as executive director of the Tennessee Press Association in
Knoxville. He served in the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1946, returning to
Murfreesboro to join his father on the Rutherford Courier and in Courier
Printing. The Rutherford Courier was sold in 1958. Bragg was later elected to
the Tennessee House and served from 1964 until his retirement in 1996, with a
break in 1969-70. In 1974 Bragg sponsored the Tennessee Open Meetings Act,
which is known as the “Sunshine Law” and mandates most official meetings of
governing bodies be open to the public. He sold his interest in the printing
company in 1981 to his son, Tommy. From then on, Bragg’s professional life
focused on state government, where he chaired the powerful Finance, Ways and
Means Committee. He helped leverage state funding for the mass communications
building at MTSU that bears his name.
Minor Elam Bragg
Minor E. Bragg (1894-1966) was born in Woodbury, Tennessee, to Thomas D. Bragg and Mary
Elizabeth Keele. Married to the former Callie Luree Bragg, with no known prior
relation to Minor Bragg, they had two children, including John, who followed
him into the publishing business. In the 1920s, Minor Bragg was the editor and
publisher of the Cannon Courier, a publication he sold in 1933 after launching
the Rutherford Courier in Murfreesboro and Smyrna two years before. Minor
launched the new Courier and a printing company despite existing competition.
His son John remembered him as an old-school journalist who thought it
important for the public to have more than one source for news and discussion
of public affairs. Minor Bragg attended Middle Tennessee Normal School, which
later became MTSU, taught briefly at Bradyville School in the 1920s, and had
interests in a funeral home, a radio station and grocery store in Woodbury. The
Rutherford Courier was sold in 1958. Its founder died in 1966. Tommy and
brother David would resume publishing their grandfather’s first newspaper — the
Cannon Courier — between 1980 and 1995, marking a third generation of Braggs in
journalism.
Van Kent Flanagan
Kent Flanagan (1945-2015)
was a native Texan who spent more than 40 years in journalism, practicing
on distinct platforms, including 21 years as the chief-of-bureau for the
Associated Press in Tennessee. By his count, it was much “more than” four
decades. He told an interviewer in 2012: “I’ve been a journalist since the age
of 12. I got drafted in middle school to write sports for the student
newspaper, and kept going.” The Ballinger, Texas, native graduated from Angelo
State University in 1968 and served four years in the Army, including service
in Vietnam. He later worked for the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel in Florida
and the San Antonio Express-News before joining the AP as a newsman in
Pennsylvania in 1979. AP sent him to South Carolina and North Dakota before his
Nashville posting in 1983. In 2000, he witnessed and covered Tennessee’s first
execution in 40 years. He left the AP in 2004 and served four years as
journalist-in-residence at Middle Tennessee State University, and over two
years as editor of the Shelbyville Times-Gazette. Flanagan was executive
director in 2012-2013 of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, a
nonprofit alliance of media, citizen and professional groups he helped form in
2003. He died in February 2015 after a long illness.
Jack Knox
John “Jack” Gill Knox Jr. (1910-1985) was a Nashville-born
artist and illustrator best known for the editorial cartoons drawn over more
than 40 years for Tennessee newspapers. He was nationally recognized because
his cartoons were often reprinted and sought by newsmakers, including
presidents from the time of Dwight Eisenhower. His wit and biting conservative
commentary appeared for 26 years in the Nashville Banner. His work previously
appeared in The Evening Tennessean in Nashville in 1933-34 and then for 11
years at the The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Fascinated by horses from
growing up in Texas, he took a year off and worked on a ranch there before
joining the Banner in 1946. He was a mainstay there until retiring in 1972, but
continued drawing cartoons for the Chattanooga News-Free Press in 1975. In
between he authored and illustrated his second book: “America’s Tennessee
Walking Horse,” published in Nashville by Hoss Country Publishers. He was a
graduate of Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee. He was
mostly self-taught and received no more formal art training beyond a correspondence
course his wife recommended. The Jack Knox Political Cartoon Collection in the
Nashville Main Public Library consists of 240 original editorial cartoon
drawings featuring his conservative political satire and caricatures in
addition to his original art and writings about Middle Tennessee rural life and
life on the grand rivers.
Roy McDonald
Roy McDonald (1901-1990) started out as a grocer looking for
what the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture described as “an
inexpensive alternative to the dominant Chattanooga Times” to advertise his
chain of Home Stores. That led him in 1933 to found the Free Press, first as a
small flier, which proved a popular and growing enterprise in southeast
Tennessee for decades to come. McDonald added news features and comics to the
Sunday weekly three years later and eventually began charging 5 cents. In
August 1936, the Free Press began daily publication and was in direct
competition with the morning Times and the afternoon Chattanooga News. McDonald
purchased the News in 1939 and launched a new afternoon daily, the Chattanooga
News-Free Press, targeting blue-collar workers whose shifts ended at 4 o’clock.
In what could be described as urban community journalism, McDonald filled his
publication with folksy hometown news and upbeat business features, steadily
building circulation against the better-known and respected Times. They entered
a joint operating agreement — described as a “truce” — in 1942 wherein the two
papers shared advertising, circulation and production departments, but
maintained separate news and editorial staffs. The News-Free Press became
increasingly conservative in its editorial policy and by its outspoken
opposition to desegregation. McDonald's increasing use of photographs of events
spurred readership. McDonald died in 1990, but his son, Frank McDonald, became
chairman and president of the newspaper. In 1993 the newspaper became the Chattanooga
Free Press again. In 1998, it was sold to an Arkansas publisher who later
acquired the Chattanooga Times and merged the newspapers ultimately under the
flag of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. It continued to publish separate
editorial pages.
Bob Parkins
Bob Parkins (1929-2008) was a local dairyman when he and wife
Dorris founded the Milan Mirror in 1965, launching a career and family legacy
of community journalism. Parkins purchased The Milan Exchange in 1977, naming
the new enterprise The Milan Mirror-Exchange. The Exchange was 103 years older
at the time. Without pretense, Parkins distinguished his newspaper by winning
countless Tennessee Press Association awards and himself through leadership in
the industry he loved as president of the Tennessee Press Association. He
published and edited the paper until his death in 2008. For several years he
served as a state correspondent for The Nashville Tennessean, filing community
features and occasional hard news pieces at a time when city papers tried to
cover more territory through the use of stringers. It helped keep Gibson
County, in central West Tennessee, connected to the world.
John N. Popham III
John N. Popham III (1910-1999) was dispatched by The New York
Times in 1947 to cover the South, an area his editors described as “from the
Potomac to central Texas.” It was an assignment in which he would distinguish
himself with his coverage of the civil rights movement. The last 20 years of
his 45-year career was spent at The Chattanooga Times, where he retired as
managing editor in 1977. A Fredericksburg, Virginia, native and Fordham
University graduate, Popham joined the Times in the 1930s. He enlisted in the
Marine Corps in 1942, earning a Bronze Star for service in the Pacific during
World War II. A year after his return to the Times, he landed the Southern
correspondent assignment with two conditions of management: he had to drive,
not fly, from place to place, and he had to keep an office at the sister-ship
Chattanooga Times. He became known to friends as “Pops” or “Johnny” and to
everyone else for his heavy Tidewater Virginia accent and the trademark hats, fitting
the caricature (at the time) of a newspaperman. Post-retirement and at the age
of 72, he earned a law degree from the John Marshall Law School after commuting
hundreds of miles a week to Atlanta.
Henry Grantland Rice
Grantland Rice (1880-1954) was an icon among sports
journalists but may be remembered as much for a poem as any of the estimated
22,000 columns he wrote. He was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1880 and
educated at Vanderbilt University, where he played football and baseball. After
graduation in 1901, he worked at Nashville (Tennessee) Daily News, The
Nashville Tennessean and the Atlanta (Georgia) Journal before joining the New
York Evening Mail in 1911. In 1914 he became a sportswriter for the New York
Tribune, later the Herald Tribune. He served in the Army
in World War I. By one authoritative estimate, Rice wrote more than 67 million
words, produced popular short motion pictures of sporting events, and according
to the newworldencyclopedia.org, became the first play-by-play baseball
announcer carried live on radio during the 1922 World Series. It was Rice who
in 1924 named that year’s Notre Dame’s football backfield as the “Four
Horsemen.” His column would eventually syndicate in more than 100 newspapers.
He published three books of poetry, and it was a poem that became his most
quoted work: “For when the one Great Scorer comes to write against your name,
He marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the game.” His
autobiography, “The Tumult and the Shouting,” appeared in 1954 — the year he
died of a heart attack in his office. He had just completed a column about
Willie Mayes and the 1954 All-Star game.
Drue Smith
Drue Smith (Died in 2001)
was a journalist of many firsts, which made her a pioneer among women in
the profession. First a feature writer for the Chattanooga News-Free Press, she
later switched to the job of “society editor” at the Chattanooga Times. She
would live to see the two newspapers merge under the Chattanooga Times Free
Press nameplate in 2001. Smith switched to radio and hosted shows on WAPO, WDOD
and later WDEF, where she was public affairs director. The day in 1954 that
WDEF-TV signed on the air, so did she with “Drue’s Party Line.” She came to
Nashville to work in communications for Gov. Frank Clement, leaving that job to
cover political news for United Press International, WLAC Radio, the Tennessee
Radio Network, WVOL Radio and multiple Nashville community newspapers. The
American Women in Radio and TV named her their Broadcaster of the Year at their
convention in Las Vegas. The Tennessee House and Senate named her the 133rd
(honorary) member of the General Assembly. The Tennessee Broadcasters’
Association made her a life member. Then Gov. Don Sundquist hosted a reception
for her at the Executive Residence attended by former governors living at the
time. She was the first woman to cover politics full time at the Capitol, was
the first woman chair of the Capitol Hill Press Corps, the first woman inducted
into the local Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi) chapter,
and became its first female president. She raised thousands of dollars for
college journalism scholarships through selling tickets to the Nashville
Gridiron Show. The SPJ/Drue Smith scholarship is still awarded annually by the
Community Foundation. Veteran Capitol Hill reporters remember for her
trademark, sound-bite grabbing strategy at the end of all gubernatorial press
conferences: “Governor, what is the bottom line?”
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