Al
Cross became director of the Institute for Rural Journalism
and Community Issues in August 2004 after more than 26 years as
a reporter at The Courier-Journal, the last 15½ as the
Louisville newspaper's chief political writer. His coverage ranged
from presidential to local elections and included all facets of
state government. After serving as interim director, in 2005 he
was named permanent director and an assistant professor in the
School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University
of Kentucky, where the Institute is based. His faculty appointment
is in the Extension Title Series, reflecting what he has long
said is his short job description, "extension agent for rural
journalists."
His awards
include a share of the Pulitzer Prize won by The Courier-Journal
staff in 1989 for coverage of the nation's deadliest bus crash.
He was co-recipient of an honorable mention for environmental
reporting in the Southern Journalism Awards for a 1987 series
on strip mining. He has received awards for reporting and column
writing from the Louisville Chapter of the Society of Professional
Journalists. He lectured at The Miller Center of Public Affairs
at the University of Virginia in 2001 and a New York workshop
on campaign finance sponsored by Brigham Young University in 2000,
and helped teach a non-credit course on politics at Bellarmine
University in Louisville in 1992. He was named an Outstanding
Kentucky Journalist by the Louisville SPJ Chapter in 2005.
Cross was
the elected national president of SPJ, the nation's oldest, broadest
and largest journalism organization, from October 2001 to September
2002. He was a charter member of his college SPJ chapter, president
of the Louisville chapter, vice president of the Bluegrass Chapter,
first chairman of the 1990 national convention in Louisville,
chairman of an SPJ regional conference, and regional director
for Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois on the national SPJ board in
1987-89. He was national chairman of Project Watchdog, an SPJ
effort to explain the role of the news media in a democratic society.
He is chairman of the SPJ Resolutions Committee, a member of the
group's International Journalism Committee, its Ethics Committee
and a director of SPJ's Sigma Delta Chi Foundation.
Staff
Assistant: Janet Whitaker
Graduate
Assistant: Vaughan Fielder
