Ken H. Fortenberry has earned hundreds of state, regional and national awards for journalism excellence including the National Sigma Delta Chi Bronze Medallion in Public Service and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for a series he edited and directed that led to changes in teacher hiring laws in more than 30 states and was reprinted in The U.S. Congressional Journal.
Both the Georgia and the South Carolina Press Associations have awarded him their prestigious Freedom of Information awards for his courageous investigative reporting.
He gained international national recognition in 1987 when his house was rocked by two explosions because of stories he published in the McCormick (S.C.) Messenger. His coverage of corruption in local law enforcement led to a federal prison term for the sheriff, the bribery conviction of the sheriff’s replacement, the exposure of the chief deputy as an ex-convict, and changes in state law enforcement certification.
He was featured on the CBS News program 60 Minutes, the NBC Today show, and his story was reported by United Press International (UPI), the Associated Press and in dozens of publications including Newsweek and The New York Times.
A former member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Alabama’s College of Communications, he is a past chairman of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Editorial Committee and a former member of the Board of Publications at the University of Southern Mississippi. Ken is an alumni and former board member of Leadership Florida.
He was the first president and founder of the Denver (NC) Area Business Association and was Denver’s Citizen of the Year in 2003.
Ken grew up in Spartanburg, SC; Miami, Florida; the San Francisco peninsula area; and in Bad Tolz, a small town in the Bavarian Alps of Germany.
A Vietnam-era U.S. Army veteran, he began his professional writing career in North Carolina where he met his future wife, the former Anna Jonas, and they were married in 1975.
Ken has edited, published or owned daily and weekly newspapers in both Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.
His hobbies include trout fishing, camping, traveling, genealogy and historical research.
Ken and Anna live in Macon, Georgia, and have five children, eleven grandchildren and one great-grand child.
Ken is a member of the Pan Am Historical Foundation, the Pan Am Museum Foundation, the Nonfiction Authors Association, the International Travel Writer’s Alliance and the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
