UA Announces 2016 Communication Hall of Fame Inductees

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.  — The University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences will holds its annual Communication Hall of Fame dinner on Thursday, Oct. 6, in the North Zone at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

The 2016 inductees are Rick Bragg, Eli Gold, James Spann and George Stewart.

Rick Bragg

Rick Bragg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of critically acclaimed and best-selling books on life in the South. His writing life has spanned weekly newspapers in his home state of Alabama to the world’s largest publishing houses. He has written eight books, including five New York Times best-sellers, perhaps most notably his 1997 best-seller All Over But the Shoutin’.

Bragg has served as the Clarence Cason Professor of Writing in the College of Communication and Information Sciences’ department of journalism and creative media for 11 years. He teaches magazine writing for the College.

James Spann

James Spann is an award-winning broadcast meteorologist who has served Alabama for more than 38 years. Spann is the chief meteorologist for ABC 33/40. He has received two of the highest awards in the nation given to broadcast meteorologists: Broadcaster of the Year from the National Weather Association and the Award for Broadcast Meteorology given by the American Meteorological Society.

Spann and his team gained fame for their aggressive, long-form coverage of one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in Alabama’s history on April 27, 2011.

Eli Gold

Eli Gold is an award-winning sportscaster and one of today’s most recognized voices on sports radio and television. Gold worked for ESPN, CBS Sports, NBC Sports and several other television and radio stations before finding his home as the voice of the Alabama Crimson Tide on the Crimson Tide Sports Network.

Gold is a member of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and a five-time recipient of the Alabama Sportscaster of the Year award voted on by his peers in the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.

George Stewart

George Stewart is a leader in the field of library and information sciences and was an instrumental member of the committee that established the first accredited graduate program in library and information studies in Alabama: the School of Library and Information Studies at The University of Alabama.

Stewart was also instrumental in forming what is now the Jefferson County Library Cooperative and served as its executive director from 1993 to 1997. The organization continues in operation as one of the few cooperative efforts among Jefferson County municipalities.

He is  working on a project to catalog and make accessible to the public the Birmingham Public Library’s extensive historic map collection.

Tickets to the event are $150 and can be purchased by calling 205/348-7229 by Friday, Sept. 23.

Contact

Hailey Grace Steele, communication specialist, hgsteele@ua.edu, 205/348-6416