Tom McKee and Courtis Fuller — who combined have nearly 80 years of reporting Cincinnati news on television — and the late Patrick Crowley, who worked 17 years as a journalist before opening his public relations firm, will be added to the Greater Cincinnati Society of Professional Journalists’ Cincinnati Journalism Hall of Fame Sept. 30.
It’s a particularly fitting tribute to McKee, who retired last year from organizing the annual Hall of Fame inductions and the chapter’s annual Excellence In Journalism Awards. The Journalism Hall of Fame was started in 1990 with an inaugural class including WCPO-TV news anchor Al Schottelkotte and Hall of Fame baseball announcer Red Barber.
“It’s very humbling when you consider the names on that list — Al Schottelkotte and (Cincinnati Post publisher and former Scripps CEO) Bill Burleigh — who put journalism on the map,” he said.
“There are many more people more deserving. I wasn’t the best reporter but I tried to work the hardest to be the best, and not make any mistakes on the air.”
McKee interned at WCPO-TV in summer of 1973 during a break from Ohio University and returned after graduation to start his career under news director Schottelkotte in January 1974. He did two stints in the Channel 9 newsroom 1974-1984, and from 1989-2018. McKee spent five years as vice president of Video Features Inc., operated by former Channel 9 reporter Elaine Green.
In 1980, McKee and Green were among the nine hostages held by gunman James Hoskins at the station on Oct. 15, 1980. Green won a prestigious Peabody Award for her 14-minute Hoskins interview conducted at gunpoint.
McKee, who covered every kind of story at Channel 9, has said he’s most proud of his "Democracy" political coverage series every other year, starting with the 2000 election, where citizens asked questions that candidates answered. The 2012 series of 60 programs on Channel 9 and wcpo.com — on which McKee was producer and reporter — won a Walter Cronkite Award for Civic Engagement for outstanding television political coverage. Since retiring in 2018 he has taught broadcast news for seven years in the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory Media Production Department.
Fuller, who was inducted into the inaugural class of the WLWT-TV Hall of Fame in 2023, was hired in 1988 from a sister Multimedia station in Macon, Georgia, a year after WLWT-TV had rejected his audition tape and cover letter.
The Pittsburgh native will be the first Cincinnati Journalism Hall of Fame member to have run for Cincinnati mayor. He left Channel 5 in 2001, in the middle of a five-year contract, to run for mayor as a member of the Charter Party when racial tensions were high after police fatally shot Timothy Thomas, a Black teen, in Over-the-Rhine that April. Fuller won the primary, but lost the November general election to incumbent Charlie Luken, another former Channel 5 anchor. Fuller hosted a radio talk show on WCIN-AM for two years before returning to WLWT-TV in 2003.
“People don’t realize that when I left the door was closed (at Channel 5). There was no deal,” Fuller says. “I feel very blessed that General Manager Richard Dyer hired me back. I think the folks at Hearst and Channel 5 saw something in me, because that (working part time at WCIN-AM) did test me.”
Fuller took a four-month medical leave in early 2023 for treatment for a malignant tumor at the base of his skull.
For more than 30 years Fuller has hosted the local Martin Luther King Day events. In 2014 he and his wife, Marla, established the Courtis Fuller Journalism Scholarship at the Cincinnati Scholarship Foundation for students pursing a degree in journalism.
Fuller semi-retired last September. He gave up his weekend anchor job, but continues to host and produce the weekly Let’s Talk Cincy public affairs show he began in 2019.
Crowley, who died last December at age 63, started his career as a reporter at small community newspapers working 16 years for the Cincinnati Enquirer, mostly in Northern Kentucky. In 2007, the Kentucky Press Association named him the state’s top columnist. He also hosted two long-running Northern Kentucky cable TV shows, On The Record and Northern Kentucky Magazine. Crowley also wrote for the Cincinnati Post, Business Courier and Maysville Ledger-Independent.
He left the Enquirer in 2009, and with Jay Fossett founded Strategic Advisors LLC, a Northern Kentucky public relations, marketing and public affairs firm.
The induction ceremony and contest awards presentation will be held at Cincinnati Public Radio’s new headquarters at 2117 Dana Ave., in Evanston. The reception begins at 6 p.m., with the inductions and awards ceremony at 7 p.m. The cost is $35 per person. Reservations can be made at Eventbrite.
Here’s a link to the 131 awards finalists selected by the Northwest SPJ Pro Chapters in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. WVXU-FM has been informed the news staff will receive 13 of the 69 rewards.
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