Communication Leaders to be Inducted Into UA’s C&IS Hall of Fame

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Three distinguished leaders will be inducted into the College of Communication and Information Sciences Hall of Fame at The University of Alabama on Oct. 21.

Established by the C&IS Board of Visitors, the Communication Hall of Fame was created in 1998 to honor, preserve and perpetuate the names and accomplishments of communication personalities who have brought lasting fame to the state of Alabama. This year marks the seventh class of inductees into the Hall of Fame. These honored individuals include:

Don Logan (1944 – )
Chairman of Time Warner’s Media and Communications Group

F. David Mathews (1935 – )
President, CEO and trustee of the Kettering Foundation

Howell H. Raines (1943 – )
Former New York Times executive editor and author

Each class of inductees shares a special quality that unites them across their various callings. “These three individuals believe passionately that what they learned in Alabama has application to their very success,” said Dr. E. Culpepper Clark, dean of the UA College of Communication and Information Sciences.

Don Logan blazed a trail from Hartselle to New York’s Columbus Circle, overlooking Central Park – along the way using the spirit of Alabama’s own Southern Progress Corp., which he did so much to shape, to guide one of the world’s largest publishing and media empires.

David Mathews took the lessons of Grove Hill to the presidency of The University of Alabama, then on to the highest councils of government, and today continues to lead a national discussion on the nature and practice of democracy.

Howell Raines sat at the knee of a remarkable woman named Grady and as a cub reporter gathered notes on a man called “Bear,” taking the grace of one and the growl of the other on a journey that led to the pinnacle of American journalism

2004 College of Communication and Information Sciences Hall of Fame Inductees

DON LOGAN
(1944 – )

There are two Don Logans. One sits high atop Manhattan in a shiny glass tower, making executive decisions at a leading media and entertainment company, Time Warner Inc., whose businesses include filmed entertainment, interactive services, television networks, cable systems and publishing. The other one balances in a skiff, casting for bass while whiffing gnats and slapping away Alabama mosquitoes.

Yet to those who know him well, both personae fit comfortably under the same skin: Logan the captain of industry and Logan the down-home outdoorsman. And then there is the other thing about Logan: friends say he is the smartest man they have ever known and the best example of the right and left brain working in sync.

Logan attended Auburn University, the first in his family from Hartselle, to do so, and studied mathematics. His college major represents one of many paradoxes. In the world of words, art and ideas, he crunches numbers. He also has a master’s degree in mathematics, an honorary doctorate in the sciences, and another in the humanities. In 1970, he left NASA for the farm – Progressive Farmer, that is, the company that would become known as Southern Progress Corp.

After revamping SPC’s computer system, he rose to CEO and eventually led the energetic regional publishing company to the attention of national publishing giant Time Inc. It was not long before Time Inc. wanted not only Southern Progress Corp., but also Don Logan. He arrived in New York to serve as president and COO of Time Inc. in 1992 and under his direction, the company posted 11 straight years of earnings growth. By 1994, Logan was named CEO of Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the world.

His executive abilities are indisputable, but so are his humanitarian passions. He has presided over Birmingham’s Chamber of Commerce, joined forces in creating the Civil Rights Institute, and served on the boards of the National Book Foundation and the Magazine Publishers of America as well as serving as a trustee of Samford University – always keeping his old-fashioned sense of values while embracing new-fashioned technologies. Logan also is an inductee of the Alabama Academy of Honor.

Some thought he would be consumed by the bigness of the Big Apple, a world where business is business, nothing personal. But not Logan. He has retained his small-town sensibilities, something that has distinguished him from his peers and generated more respect. “I would’ve left the company absolutely [if not for Logan],” says Ann Moore, who succeeded Logan as chairman and CEO of Time Inc. “With Logan, it’s a true meritocracy.”

Logan is principled and no-nonsense about getting the job done. Today, he serves as chairman of Time Warner’s Media and Communications Group, where he helps run the largest media conglomerate in the country but does so with a “no bureaucracy” modus operandi. He has been recognized as Executive of the Year by Adweek magazine and has received the Henry Johnson Fisher Award, the magazine industry’s highest honor, and numerous other prestigious awards.

It is no surprise that this leader, who can make tough analytical decisions with the goodness of a Southern heart, still heads home to Alabama to fish in his private lake on land that, of course, straddles two time zones – the two in one all over again.

F. DAVID MATHEWS
(1935 – )

David Mathews cannot help championing democracy. It is in his blood. When Mathews’s grandfather served as superintendent of Clarke County schools during the 1920s, public education was suffering from funding woes that resulted in sharp disparities. The elder Mathews swore an oath to equalize all schools in the county because there was no question that such disparities were “un-American, undemocratic, and not Christian.”

That story and others passed on to David Mathews became a lifelong obsession with democracy, its public deliberations, and the education of its body politic. After high school, he made his way north, 120 miles, to The University of Alabama, where he studied classical Greek and history, taking both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees before serving in the Army.

Following military service, Mathews obtained his doctorate at Columbia University and returned to UA, where he joined the faculty in history and the administration as dean of men.

Then-president Frank Rose saw a winner in the young scholar and leader. Mathews rose quickly to executive vice president, and within five years, at age 33, he became president, the youngest person ever to hold the University’s highest office. For 11 years, beginning in 1969, he guided his alma mater through some of her most turbulent times, relying on his intelligence and an instinct for loyalty and commitment that many consider evidence of a precocious wisdom.

Those qualities served him well as president, but it was his passion for democracy that defined him – a spirit best explained in the words of one of his favorites, Mary Parker Follett, who observed, “We have an instinct for democracy because we have an instinct for wholeness; we get wholeness only through reciprocal relations, through infinitely expanding reciprocal relations.”

President Gerald R. Ford noticed. From 1975 to 1977 Mathews took leave from the University to serve as U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, where his overall mission was to assist Ford in restoring the nation’s confidence in democracy – not an electoral mandate but a public one necessary in the wake of Watergate. Mathews has not stopped in that quest.

His most recent books, “Politics for People: Finding a Responsible Public Voice” and “Why Public Schools? Whose Public Schools? What Early Communities Have to Tell Us,” echo his experiences as both the impressionable grandson and the idealistic leader who believes “politics isn’t just about government. It’s about the way people solve their common problems.”

Mathews has received numerous awards including a citation as one of the nation’s 10 Most Outstanding Young Men; the Nicholas Murray Butler Medal in Silver from Columbia University; Administrator of the Year from the Alabama Conference of Black Mayors; and the Brotherhood Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews. He also is an inductee of the prestigious Alabama Academy of Honor.

The recipient of 16 honorary degrees, Mathews serves on the boards of the National Civic League and Miles College, and chairs the Council on Public Policy Education. He is also a trustee of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation and a member of the executive committee of Public Agenda.

In 1981, Mathews became president, CEO, and trustee of the Kettering Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1927 to “sponsor and carry out scientific research for the benefit of humanity.” Inspired by the creative philosophy and pragmatic open-mindedness of its founder, Charles Kettering, the foundation’s mission has expanded to include research in education, international affairs, and the practice of democracy – what David Mathews sums up in a single question: “What does it mean to make a democracy work as it should?”

Almost 100 years ago, his grandfather answered. During his presidency, the University answered. And Mathews, with Kettering’s choir of varied voices, is still answering today.

HOWELL H. RAINES
(1943 – )

Where else but in Alabama can the genesis of a Pulitzer Prize begin on a football field? When the Birmingham Post-Herald offered free tickets to whomever would cover The University of Alabama’s game against Auburn on Thanksgiving Day 1964 (Alabama 21, Auburn 14), copy desk rookie Howell Raines was ready. He hit the field, ran the sidelines with the Bear, almost lost his pad and his storyline when he went airborne to cheer a breakaway halfback, then wrote what editor Clarke Stallworth says is the best story ever to come from a starter. It was indeed the start of a monumental career in journalism.

After the Post-Herald, Raines worked as a reporter for WBRC-TV, the Tuscaloosa News, the Birmingham News, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before joining the St. Petersburg Times. He worked as a film critic and entertainment editor before switching to politics, which would become his best-known beat and where his tenacity would become legendary. From there he served as a national correspondent in Atlanta for the New York Times and then as White House correspondent, national political correspondent, Washington bureau chief, and editorial page editor before being named executive editor of the Times in 2001.

But Raines’s gift for writing was not confined to newsprint. He published a novel, a memoir about mid-life, and an account of the Civil Rights Movement, changing not only the face of literary nonfiction but also the hearts of those who read his work. The intensely personal touch with which he wrote about civil rights contributed to his winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for “Grady’s Gift,” a personal reflection about his childhood in Birmingham and a woman named Grady who shaped his life.

Less than a decade later and under his leadership, the New York Times covered the biggest story of our time: September 11. Raines was only days into the job when his office became command central as the Times did the work that won it seven Pulitzers, a record by all accounts. To date he has received or been directly linked to nine Pulitzers.

But numbers have never been what Raines is about; he is about style – of words, that is. Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, claims he was one of the first stylists. Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize winner for “Carry Me Home,” claims she and any other serious writer of the Civil Rights Movement must begin with the oral memoirs Raines gathered and explained in “My Soul Is Rested.” “It’s the civil rights bible,” she said. “He writes like a dream.”

Part of his dream, personally and professionally, has been to tell the story of history, whether last hour’s news conference from the White House or last night’s local election results; but because he cannot be satisfied with half-told stories, he has become known as a sort of Southern-culture street fighter, demanding a complete look at history in the making, no matter how unpleasant.

Some say his unflinching perfectionism and dedication are reminiscent of the Bear himself. Certainly he is one of the few, if not the only, big-time editor to employ Bearisms to get at larger truths. “If you didn’t come to win the national championship,” Paul Bryant told his team, “you’re in the wrong place.” Some say Raines did not just quote him; he channeled him.

Raines earned his bachelor’s degree from Birmingham-Southern College. After graduation in 1964, he served on active duty with the National Guard and continued his education at The University of Alabama where he received his master’s degree in English before striking out for new territory.

His courage of conviction has inspired countless journalists and writers, especially those who might otherwise have suffered from a sense of regional inferiority. Raines has never understood inferiority – in himself or anyone else. His intellect encompasses a depth and breadth uncommon to most and spoken of with awe by those who have known him.

He is passionate, gifted, intelligent, determined, and fearless, not to mention shot through with electric energy. And whether under his charge or watching him charge, it is impossible to deny that this is a man who plays to win. Newsday said it best: “Roll, Howell, Roll!”