Business journalist Ernest Holsendolph has been named to the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.
Holsendolph is a first-generation college graduate of Columbia University whose 42-year journalism career began at The Call & Post, Cleveland’s Black newspaper, in 1961, following service in the U.S. Army’s Security Agency intelligence unit. He moved to daily journalism at the Cleveland Press in 1963 and covered the historic March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech.
He then went on to write for Fortune, The Washington Star, and The New York Times, where he covered deregulation and anchored the team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for its coverage of the breakup of AT&T.
in 1983, Holsendolph became one of the first black business editors of a major metropolitan paper when he took over running the business desk at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, his hometown paper.
In 1989, Holsendolph left Cleveland and moved to Atlanta, where he worked for the Journal-Constitution, primarily as a business columnist, before retiring in June 2004.
He received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2000, published his memoir “Let ME Tell It!” in 2018, and earned a special achievement award from NABJ for counseling and mentoring an entire generation of Black journalists.
See all of the inductees here.
