Hodding Carter was the University Professor of Leadership and Public Policy. He is chair of the University of North Carolina Press Development Council, a member of the Faculty’s Honorary Degrees Committee, a member of the California Performing Arts Advisory Committee, a member of the Thomas W. Lambeth Lecture Committee, and is involved in several Center for the Study of the American South projects and programs.

Dr. Carter was president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Dr. Carter also worked for about 18 years as a reporter and editor for the Delta Democrat-Times of Greenville, Miss., which was owned by his father. As an editorialist, Carter strongly promoted the presidential candidacy of Terry Sanford ’39. He later worked on the presidential campaigns of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

Nationally, Hodding Carter is perhaps best remembered as the spokesman for the U.S. State Department during the Iran hostage crisis in the late 1970s. Dr. Carter’s wife, Patt Derian, also worked in the Carter administration’s human rights initiatives in other countries.

Dr. Carter later was a correspondent for the PBS Frontline documentary series and wrote as a contributor for major U.S. newspapers. He is a four-time Emmy winner and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for broadcast journalism.

Jason Zengerle is the political correspondent for GQ and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. He graduated from Swarthmore College with a major in political science and a minor in art history. He writes about politics, culture, and (when his editors indulge him) college basketball. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and other publications; and it has been anthologized in several books, including The Best American Political Writing, The Best American Medical Writing, and Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Leoneda Inge is WUNC’s “Race and Southern Culture Reporter.” She is the first public radio journalist in the South to hold such a position, which explores modern and historical constructs to tell stories of poverty and wealth, health and food culture, education and racial identity.

Leoneda’s most recent work includes “The Hanging,” in collaboration with UNC-TV and Independent Lens. The series focuses on the hanging death of a black teenager in mostly white Bladenboro, North Carolina. Leoneda is also author of the series, “Perils and Promise,” drawing attention to the challenges facing rural educators and students.  

Leoneda is the recipient of three Gracie Awards from the Alliance for Women in Media and several awards from the Associated Press, the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) and the National Association of Black Journalists. In 2006, she and a team of WUNC journalists won an Alfred I. DuPont Award from Columbia University for the series “North Carolina Voices: Understanding Poverty.”

Leoneda is a graduate of Florida A&M University and Columbia University, where she earned her Master’s Degree in Journalism as a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics. Leoneda’s work has taken her to Italy, South Africa, South Korea and Japan. In 2014, she traveled to Berlin, Brussels and Prague as a German/American Journalist Exchange Fellow with the RIAS Berlin Commission/RTDNF.

Carol Wolf is a visiting lecturer at UNC School of Media and Journalism. You can read more about her on her page.