ALUMNI PROFILE
Holsendolph, Journalist and Mentor, Honored by SABEW
By Alex Sachare

Ernie Holsendolph ’58, an award-winning business writer and columnist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a mentor to many successful journalists, received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers at its annual convention on May 2 in Atlanta.

“Aside from being a trailblazing business journalist, Ernie is among a select few in journalism who excels at encouraging young people to enter business journalism,” said Mark Russell, metro editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, in presenting the award. “And he is certainly without peer for mentoring and encouraging African American, Asian, Native American and Latino young people to become business journalists.”

Among prominent journalists who benefited from Holsendolph’s advice are George Curry, editor in chief of Emerge magazine, former newsman with the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Chicago Tribune and the first African American president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Curry was a young researcher/reporter at Sports Illustrated in 1970 when Holsendolph offered guidance on how to make the leap to become a daily newspaper reporter.

Others include Dana Canedy, a business reporter for The New York Times; E.J. Mitchell, managing editor for The Detroit News; Sam Fulwood, a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times; Wilma Randle, a former Chicago Tribune reporter; Jonathan Hicks, a reporter for The New York Times; and Angelo Henderson, a national reporter for the Wall Street Journal who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing last year.

“I love our craft,” said Holsendolph. “That’s one reason why I have always had as an avocation the encouragement of others, young people, to get into our business, and to persuading young journalists that business journalism could be the most exciting part of it. Just to do that has been rewarding enough, but to be noticed and recognized is doubly rewarding.”

Holsendolph began his career in daily journalism with the Cleveland Press in 1963, covering among other events the historic march on Washington in which the Rev. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. After working for the Washington Star and Fortune magazine, he joined The New York Times as a financial reporter based first in New York and then in Washington, where one of the areas he covered was deregulation. He anchored the team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for its coverage of the breakup of AT&T.

He later served for six years as business editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer before joining the Atlanta Journal-Constitution 11-years ago.