Rodgers, Harvey join Black Journalists Hall of Fame

Pat Harvey

Two of the most charismatic and dynamic figures ever to work in Chicago television — former CBS 2 general manager Johnathan Rodgers and former WGN news anchor Pat Harvey — are among five new members of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.

Rodgers, 66, who joined CBS 2 as assistant news director in the 1970s, returned in 1986 to become the first African-American general manager of any network-owned station in the country. After four years in that role, he was promoted to Chicago-based head of the CBS Television Stations group and later went on to become president of the Discovery Networks. He retired in 2011 after seven years as president and CEO of TV One.

Harvey, 57, was a popular and award-winning news anchor at WGN from 1985 to 1989 before moving on to a stellar career in Los Angeles — first at KCAL-TV and since 2010 at KCBS-TV. Earlier in her career, she helped launch CNN Headline News and anchored CNN’s Daybreak newscast.

Both were inducted last week along with Gwen Ifill, moderator of Washington Week and senior correspondent for PBS NewsHour, Ruth Allen Ollison, former television news executive and media personality, and (posthumously) Wallace Terry, the late author and Time magazine deputy bureau chief in Saigon.

On a panel of NABJ Hall of Fame inductees at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Rodgers advised fellow journalists and students to focus on economic issues facing the United States. “If you don’t understand the historical [background] and philosophy behind our economic system, you won’t be a good journalist,” he said.

The five latest inductees join 45 others who’ve entered the Hall of Fame since its founding in 1990. Others with Chicago ties include Merri Dee, Lynn Norment, Carole Simpson, and the late Vernon Jarrett, Max Robinson, Robert S. Abbott and John Sengstacke.