2024 class of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame announced

Three former Detroit News staffers — Molly Abraham, John Bebow and Eric Freedman — are among the six journalists to be inducted into the 2024 class of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.

Bebow was a reporter at The News from 1993 to 1996 and 2002-2003, covering the city of Detroit, casino development and organized crime. He went to Iraq to cover the war for The News in 2003. He also launched the Center for Michigan and Bridge Michigan; he retired as publisher of the award-winning nonprofit publication in December. Bebow also was previously an editor at MLive and a reporter at the Detroit Free Press, the Chicago Tribune, the Ann Arbor News and the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

Abraham, who died in April of natural causes at age 92, was a longtime restaurant critic and reporter for The Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press and Hour Detroit. With a career that spanned seven decades, Abraham is remembered as influential and fair, but also kind and glamorous.

She largely wrote for The Detroit News up until her retirement in 2018, aside from the 1980s and ’90s when she was at the Free Press where she produced multiple editions of a paperback dining guide stuffed with reviews.

More:Legendary, 'glamorous' and prolific Detroit News restaurant critic Molly Abraham has died

Freedman won a Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting in 1994 with Jim Mitzelfeld for their Detroit News reporting on a legislative corruption scandal in Michigan House Fiscal Agency. He worked at The News from 1984-95. He's now the director of the MSU Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.

"I think it's a recognition of two things," Freedman told The News on Friday. "One is the quality of journalism that not just I produced, but the fellow reporters and editors I've worked with since 1976 have produced. No journalist is an island and the quality of our work, the editing, the ideas, the motivation, the adrenaline, it's something we all share. It's an enterprise."

Freedman said he enjoys being both an active journalist and educator.

"I'm an active freelancer, I do active editing ... and I like to show students, and I think all instructors should, that we still do what we teach," said Freedman, who also oversees MSU's Capital News Service.

"Since I joined the J-school faculty I've been privileged to be able to meet, interview, work with, collaborate with journalists and journalism educators and press rights activists around the world," he said. "People with great courage and bravery to practice our profession under personal and family perils, everything from assault, kidnapping and murder to censorships, libel lawsuits, harassment, tax audits and the mission that we all share, whether we're in the United States or in an oppressive regime, that's our shared mission and our obligation to society."

The rest of the 2024 class of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame includes WXYZ-TV journalist and anchor Carolyn Clifford, auto industry radio journalist Jeff Gilbert of WWJ (950 AM) and Larry Lee of Gongwer News Service, a Lansing-based political newsletter where Lee worked from 1970 until his retirement in 2009.

The induction ceremony is set for April 14 at the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center in East Lansing. Learn more at mijournalismhalloffame.org.

mbaetens@detroitnews.com