Monthly Archives: May 2009

Larry Whiteside to be inducted in NABJ Hall of Fame

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<img style="float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-bottom: 10px;" src="https://sportstaskforce.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/larrywhiteside1.jpg?w=213&quot; alt="Larry Whiteside" title="Larry Whiteside"
WASHINGTON, D.C. –The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) will induct four outstanding journalists, including Sports Task Force pioneer Larry Whiteside, who made integral contributions to journalism and civil rights into its Hall of Fame at a ceremony to be held on Friday, August 7, 2009 at the 2009 NABJ Annual Convention and Career Fair in Tampa.

“These remarkable individuals endured great challenges so that black journalists today can have more freedom and professional opportunity,” said NABJ President Barbara Ciara. “As Hall of Fame inductees, their memory and accomplishments will be preserved and passed on to future generations.”

The NABJ Hall of Fame inductees were named at the organization’s April Board of Directors meeting in Tampa.

Larry Whiteside – Reporter, The Boston Globe (Boston), (posthumous)

Whiteside, a 1999 NABJ Lifetime Achievement Award Winner and 2008 National Baseball Hall of Fame writer inductee, was the first African-American beat sports writer for the Boston Globe. Whiteside was also only the third African-American recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, given by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in 2008.

Whiteside covered the Red Sox from 1973 to 1994, chronicling some of the team’s most notable moments in baseball history. He was an expert on Negro league baseball and one of the first sports writers to track baseball’s international play. “Sides” made four trips to Japan and two to Australia covering the sport.

Whiteside started with the Kansas City Kansan in 1959. He moved on to the Milwaukee Journal to cover the Milwaukee Braves and Brewers as well as civil rights issues in the ‘60s. In 1971, Whiteside started The Black List to help sports editors find qualified black journalists to hire. Whiteside died in 2007 at the age of 69.

The three other inductees are:

  • Earl Caldwell – Reporter and early Civil Rights Activist (New York)
  • Peggy Peterman – St. Petersburg Times (Florida); (posthumous)
  • Lynn Norment – Editor, EBONY Magazine (Chicago)

Read the full release at www.nabj.org.