8 to Be Inducted Into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 27, 2022) — Three Pulitzer Prize winners, a groundbreaking TV journalist, a national sports columnist and three legendary community journalists make up the 2022 class of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. This year’s induction ceremony will be held later this year at the University of Kentucky.

This year’s eight inductees are:

  • Former Kentucky resident Scott Applewhite, a four-decade and Pulitzer Prize-winning senior photojournalist with The Associated Press based in Washington, D.C.;
  • Paducah native Jerry Brewer, a national sports columnist for The Washington Post;
  • The late Melissa Forsythe, who was who news anchor and reporter for WAVE-3 and WHAS-11 in Louisville;
  • The late John B. Gaines of Bowling Green, who was president and publisher of the Bowling Green Daily News for six decades;
  • The late Bill Mardis of Somerset, a Taylor County native who served more than 50 years as a reporter, editor and columnist at the Commonwealth Journal;
  • Mark Maynard of Kentucky Today, an online news service published by the Kentucky Baptist Convention, who also had a distinguished 45-year career at The Daily Independent in Ashland, Kentucky; 
  • Lexington native Stuart Warner, whose five-decade career included serving as Lexington Herald-Leader sports editor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor at the Plain Dealer of Cleveland; and
  • Louisville native Deborah Yetter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor who has spent more than decades at The Courier-Journal, and before that the Louisville Times.

Created by the UK Journalism Alumni Association in 1981, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame honors journalists who are Kentucky natives or have spent a significant portion of their careers working for Kentucky news-media organizations. More than 200 individuals, both with and without formal ties to UK, have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Details about the 2022 induction ceremony will be released later this year. For more information, contact the UK School of Journalism and Media at 859-257-3904 or via email at jam@uky.edu.

As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.   

In 2022, UK was ranked by Forbes as one of the “Best Employers for New Grads” and named a “Diversity Champion” by INSIGHT into Diversity, a testament to our commitment to advance Kentucky and create a community of belonging for everyone. While our mission looks different in many ways than it did in 1865, the vision of service to our Commonwealth and the world remains the same. We are the University for Kentucky.