BirminghamWatch
Lifelong Journalist and BirminghamWatch Founder Carol Nunnelley Dies
Carol Nunnelley, founding executive director of the Alabama Initiative for Independent Journalism, died Dec. 3 after a long illness.
Her more than 50-year career as a journalist led to many important initiatives, both locally and nationally.
Nunnelley began her career as a reporter at The Birmingham News in 1966, when women were still something of an oddity in newsrooms. She covered Birmingham’s evolving race relations, a subject historically neglected by the newspaper; exposed neglect and abuse in Alabama’s segregated juvenile corrections system; and uncovered misuse of federal dollars intended to alleviate poverty.
As managing editor of The News from 1992 through 2000, she oversaw and was an active voice in projects on failures in state child protection services and in the oversight of facilities for the elderly; investigations into the application of the death penalty in Alabama and the poor performance of state schools; and reporting on health problems of Gulf War veterans.
Nunnelley continued to blaze new trails in the years after she served as managing editor of The Birmingham News. She worked on the national level with Associated Press Managing Editors to create new programs and received APME’s top award in 2008 for her role in the betterment of journalism.
In 2014, she turned her attention back to the Birmingham community with the creation of the Alabama Initiative for Independent Journalism. She served as its founding executive director until her retirement in 2021, leading the operations of BirminghamWatch as a nonpartisan, nonprofit news outlet covering the metro area. That legacy continues today, with BirminghamWatch as part of a fast-growing national movement of news nonprofits.
Nunnelley is the author of “Building Trust in the News,” a best-practices guidebook for editors. Since 2009, Nunnelley edited “Ethnic Media: Their Influence on Politics and Participation,” wrote a biography for young readers of the first woman to serve on Alabama’s Supreme Court, and collaborated with H. Brandt Ayers, publisher and columnist at the Anniston Star, on “Fifty Years of Commentary,” a collection of his writings.
Nunnelley is survived by her husband, Bill; daughter, Meg Olsen; and two grandchildren. Arrangements are not yet final.
