10/22/03

Bob Lowry, 334/844-9999

TWO TO BE INDUCTED IN APA HALL OF HONOR AT AUBURN

JAMES MILLS

JOHN STEVENSON

AUBURN -- A crusading city newspaper reporter-editor and a small town newspaper editor will be inducted into the Alabama Newspaper Hall of Honor on Nov. 1 at Auburn University.

James E. Mills and John B. Stevenson will be inducted posthumously by the Alabama Press Association.

The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m., in the Alabama Newspaper Hall of Honor Room in the Ralph Brown Draughon Library. Registration will start at 9:30 a.m. The ceremony will be followed by a luncheon in the library.

Mills and Stevenson will be the 92nd and 93rd inductees into the Hall of Honor, which was established by the APA in 1959. Plaques honoring the pair will be placed in the Hall of Honor Room at the Draughon Library.

Mills began his career as a reporter with the Daily Oklahoman and went on to editorial stints with the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial, Palm Beach Times, Cleveland Press, Cincinnati Post and Memphis Press-Scimitar.

But he made a name for himself after becoming managing editor of the Birmingham Post in 1931.

Mills championed causes to protect Alabamians from loan-sharking and poll taxes, and he fought to bring cheaper electric rates to Birmingham.

He ended his distinguished newspaper career as editor of the Birmingham Post-Herald on Jan. 1, 1967, after winning a lengthy legal battle resulting from his arrest on a bogus charge of violating Alabama's Corrupt Practices Act.

That arrest stemmed from an editorial that Mills wrote and published on Election Day in 1962. The editorial, during Birmingham's civil rights struggles, urged voters to dump then-Mayor Arthur Haynes and Commissioner Bull Conner by changing Birmingham's form of government.

Voters did that, but it led to the arrest of Mills and the legal battle that did not end until four years later with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Mills' favor. The historic ruling was a precedent-setting victory for First Amendment rights ­ in Alabama and other states having similar laws that banned Election Day campaigning.

In a 1995 interview with AU journalism professor Ed Williams, Mills said he wanted to be remembered as a "crusading editor." And while his efforts to rid his community of morally corrupt leadership in 1962 earned him a place in legal journals and journalism textbooks, that was neither the beginning nor the end of Mills' crusade.

After his retirement from the Post-Herald, he continued to fight for causes he believed would make Alabama a better place to live. He was particularly committed to working for stronger campaign finance and ethics laws. Mills died in 1998 at the age of 98.

Unlike Mills, John Stevenson specialized in community journalism, providing the primary source of news for the Randolph County area for 45 years as editor of The Randolph Leader.

Stevenson's advocacy and strong stands on key issues left the communities served by The Leader as much better places. As a young editor, he quickly saw the need for more photos in the newspaper, so he taught himself photography. For the next two decades, Stevenson was personally responsible for most of the local photos published, regularly developing his photos late into the night in a home darkroom.

Through The Leader, he successfully led campaigns for a 4-mill tax in the 1950s to obtain federal Hill-Burton financing that built hospitals in Roanoke and Wedowee and clinics in Wadley and Woodland.

Another campaign, led by The Leader in the 1960s resulted in the passage of a 30-year 5-mill tax for a new high school in Roanoke. During the racial unrest of the 1950s and 1960s, Stevenson urged racial understanding, conciliation and tolerance, and a 1955 editorial on the subject won first place in APA's Better Newspaper Contest. That editorial was the only item of his that he ever entered into a contest throughout his career.

Racial strife that surfaced in other areas during those years was largely avoided in Randolph County.

The Leader sponsored clean election campaigns in the 1950s and aggressively investigated and reported irregularities. This practice eventually led to the arrest and conviction of the county's sheriff on charges of election fraud.

Stevenson's cousin and Leader co-worker, Edgar Stevenson, summed up his cousin's approach in a 1981 speech when "John B." received the Boy Scouts' highest award for volunteers, the Silver Beaver Award.

"He has been a steadying, progressive influence in his community," said Edgar Stevenson. "What he decides is right usually is right. A newspaper editor criticizes and gets criticized. Some persons yield to criticism. Some donšt."

Stevenson died in 1997 at the age of 82.

oct03:AU-apa