Betty Baye

Betty Winston Bayé

Closing Ceremony
4:30 p.m.

Betty Winston Bayé has been an editorial writer and columnist for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky since 1991. She began at The C-J in 1984 as a general assignment reporter, and prior to joining the editorial board held other positions as assistant city editor and an assistant Neighborhoods editor. Prior to moving to Kentucky, Bayé reported on housing and urban affairs for The Daily Argus in Mount Vernon, NY.

Born in Brooklyn, Bayé earned a master's degree from the Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism and Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College, City University of New York. Her major was Communications. During the academic year, 1990-91, Bayé was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She hosted "The Betty Bayé Show" on local Louisville television for six years.

Betty's first book, The Africans, a novel, was published 1983. In 2000, August Press published Blackbird, a collection of her newspaper columns and original essays. She has been published in Essence magazine; Main Man magazine; BlackAmericaWeb.com (Tom Joyner's website), and has been a frequent panelist on The Reporters Roundtable segment of The Tavis Smiley Show on National Public Radio. More recently, her commentaries can be heard on News & Notes with Ed Gordon, also on NPR.

As a participating researcher and writer for the Africans in the Americas series sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Journalism, Betty Winston Bayé has traveled to Jamaica, Cuba, and Ghana. She is a past vice-president of the National Association of Black Journalists and the New York Association of Black Journalists and The Louisville Association of Black Communicators. She is also a founder of The Black Alumni Network of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism; a member of The William Monroe Trotter Group, a collective of African American columnists; Chums Inc.; Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.; St. Stephen Church, and founded a book club, The Zora Neale Hurston Readers Circle.