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Six new inductees will enter Mass. Broadcasters Hall of Fame

By Travis Andersen Globe Staff,Updated March 23, 2023, 12:07 p.m.
The late WBZ-TV reporter Bill Shields.George Rizer

Six new inductees will enter the venerable Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame in June, the organization announced Wednesday.

In a statement, the Hall of Fame said the media luminaries, two of whom are deceased, will be inducted June 8 during a luncheon at the Marriott Boston Quincy Hotel in Quincy.

Inductees include Therman Toon, a trailblazing Black TV news photographer in the New England area who died in 2005 and who “risked his life on several occasions filming the busing of school students in Boston” in the 1970s, the group said, and longtime WBZ-TV reporter Bill Shields, who succumbed to cancer in February.

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The additional inductees are Pat Costa, the owner of five Spanish language radio stations in the Merrimack Valley area; veteran WCVB-TV sports reporter Mike Lynch; former Boston radio DJ and music director Donna Halper; and WBZ News Radio reporter Carl Stevens, who stepped away from fulltime work at the station in 2019.

“What an @MABroadcasters HOF Class!” tweeted WBZ-TV sports anchor Dan Roche on Wednesday. “Worked with the legendary @WBZ Bill Shields and @wbznewsradio @carlwbz @LynchieWCVB set the standard of excellence in the Boston sports tv world and has been a longtime friend. And Pat Costa has been very kind to me over the years.”

Halper, an author and original Hall of Fame board member who now teaches at Lesley University, also will receive this year’s Pioneer Award, which honors broadcast professionals who’ve made significant contributions to the industry in leadership roles, according to the group’s website.

“What an absolute privilege to find I’m being inducted into the Mass. Broadcasters Hall of Fame,” Halper tweeted Wednesday. “I’m being given the Pioneer Award, for my work as a media historian.”

WBZ News Radio, meanwhile, tweeted out congratulations to Stevens on Wednesday and also noted Shields’s induction.

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“We’re very proud to announce our reporter/poet laureate Carl Stevens will be inducted into the @MABroadcasters Hall of Fame,” BZ tweeted. “Carl joins other notable names in Boston media for this year’s class, including the late Bill Shields, long-time reporter at our sister station, @wbz.”

Stevens, the station said in a follow-up tweet, has “been part of the WBZ family since 1991, reporting on news stories across the Bay State and crafting beloved poems that are broadcast on WBZ’s airwaves.”

Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.

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