W. Hodding Carter III

W. Hodding Carter III is an award-winning journalist, educator, public official, and civic leader. Born in New Orleans, raised in Greenville, Mississippi, and educated at Princeton, he began his journalistic career in 1959 as a reporter with his family’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, and went on to become its managing editor and associate publisher. During his tenure, he was active in the civil rights movement both editorially and in political action. He worked for two successful presidential campaigns, Lyndon B. Johnson’s in 1964, and Jimmy Carter’s in 1976. President Carter appointed him Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and spokesman for the State Department, where he became the public face for the administration during the Iran hostage crisis. Hodding Carter went on to a national career in the media as television commentator and newspaper correspondent on public affairs, working with ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS, BBC, and The New York Times, among other leading media, and in the process earning four national Emmy Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award for his documentaries. He served as the Knight Professor of Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland from 1994 until he resigned to serve as president of Knight Foundation, a position he held from 1998 to 2005. Hodding Carter is currently professor of leadership and public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Among his publications are The Reagan Years and The South Strikes Back.