‘A quiet wisdom': Vanessa Gallman, Herald-Leader editorial leader, Lantern columnist, dies at 71

Yahoo

05-02-2025

Vanessa Gallman
Vanessa Gallman, a nationally respected journalist who directed the Lexington Herald-Leader editorial pages for over two decades, died Feb. 3 in Lexington. She was 71.
Through a career that spanned more than 40 years and included stints as a reporter and editor at publications including the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Charlotte Observer and Knight-Ridder's Washington bureau, Gallman became known for her equanimity, intelligence and generous spirit.
Read Vanessa Gallman's columns in the Lantern.
'Vanessa brought a quiet wisdom to her job as editorial page editor,' said Pam Luecke who, as editor of Herald-Leader, appointed Gallman to the editorial job in 1997. 'She had a strong moral compass and firmly believed that strong journalism could improve society.'
During her time as editorial page editor Gallman oversaw work that earned numerous national, regional and state awards, including a Pulitzer Prize won by Joel Pett in 2000 for editorial cartooning.
Gallman also helped launch the nonprofit Kentucky Lantern in November 2022. 'She became a regular columnist but beyond that was also a great source of ideas, inspiration and her trademark wisdom,' Lantern Editor Jamie Lucke said. 'Reading a Gallman column was like watching a master brick mason at work. The bricks were facts, she applied just the right amount of opinion and by the end you had an elegantly constructed, basically irrefutable argument. She was a great colleague and friend and I and all the Lantern family will miss her very much.'
Gallman brought with her to Kentucky a profound understanding of national politics and policy after covering presidential and congressional campaigns, urban policy, welfare reform and writing a nationally syndicated column. But, at the time of her hiring, she said she was 'eager to get back into a community.' After writing from Washington about national policy, 'I felt a bit isolated and removed from the issues that real people care about, and not just the issues, the solutions — the kind of real community-based solutions to their problems.'
In Lexington she directed editorial campaigns that successfully advocated for Lexington's smoking ban, the first in Kentucky, and the Purchase of Development Rights rural land preservation program. 'Lexington and the Herald-Leader were made better thanks to her conscientious research and graceful writing,' Luecke said.
Gallman grew up in North Carolina and attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she was a student in the groundbreaking Black Studies Program. 'Self-confidence and high expectations were the program's best gifts,' she later wrote. 'There is no way I would have prospered at such a large university without the education and nurturing I received from UNCC Black Studies teachers.'
She went on to earn a degree in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She began her career as a working journalist with a three-month internship at the Charlotte Observer and stayed five years, winning state awards for spot-news reporting and column writing. While there she covered the religion beat which she later said was an important learning experience. 'Once you can talk to people about why they think they're here and where they think they're going afterward, you can almost talk to people about anything,' she said.
At her next stop, the Tallahassee Democrat, she oversaw regional coverage as assistant city editor. Gallman also began her career as a mentor, helping create a program at Florida A&M University, an historically Black college, where journalism students worked at the school paper for credit. The program later became a requirement in the journalism curriculum.
Later, as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, she created and managed a student-staffed news service that offered broadcast and online reports that were picked up by regional media, including the Washington Post. As at Florida, working for the service became part of the core curriculum, this time for a masters in public affairs reporting.
She remained based in the Washington D.C. area until her move to Lexington, working as metro editor for the Washington Times and assistant city editor for the Washington Post before returning to reporting as a national correspondent for the Knight Ridder Washington bureau.
'I've taught journalism students at predominantly black Florida A&M University and predominantly white University of Maryland. As an editor, I supervised local political reporting at The Washington Post and its conservative rival, The Washington Times,' Gallman wrote in her inaugural column as editorial page editor. 'Through it all, I've learned that people are more alike than different; that you can't be moral and bigoted; that people have tremendous capacity for self-reliance, but that's no excuse for uncaring government.'
Rufus Friday who, as publisher of the Herald-Leader from 2011 to 2018, served on the editorial board and worked with Gallman, praised her even temperament and ability to balance conflicting interests. 'She had this incredible ability to bring a sense of calm while still being completely in charge of so many different opinions on the board, especially mine,' he said.
Gallman 'was always looking for a way to be a storyteller,' wrote Mae Israel, her journalism classmate at North Carolina and lifelong friend. 'From our days as young journalists, Vanessa was persistent and savvy,' Israel wrote and recalled a particular incident. 'She pitched a story to Southern Exposure magazine about a 1979 Ku Klux Klan march on the same Selma-Montgomery, Alabama, route as the famed 1965 civil rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr.,' because the paper where she was working at the time didn't want to send a reporter. 'But Vanessa found a way to be a witness to this event and then write about it. That's how she approached her life.'
Israel described Gallman as 'a loyal friend who really listened and then offered insightful observations. No matter what was happening, she remained calm and clear-headed.'
She was also a keen basketball fan, something Friday said, led to their one serious rift. 'Vanessa was a die-hard UNC Tar Heel alum, and I'm a proud NC State Wolfpack alum. We had plenty of fun going back and forth about whose school was better,' he said.
Gallman was the first Black leader of the Herald-Leader's editorial pages and she became the first Black female president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, now known as the Association of Opinion Journalists. She was a member of Pulitzer Prize juries for column writing and editorial cartooning and chaired the 2015 jury for editorial writing.
David Horsey, political columnist and cartoonist at the Seattle Times recalled serving with her. 'Our task was to sift through a great pile of hundreds of editorial cartoons and, in a short amount of time, all agree on the winner,' he wrote, 'In the midst of this frenetic task where we all had different ideas about what constituted a great cartoon, Vanessa was a calm, steady, savvy presence.'
Throughout her career Gallman mentored hundreds of young, and some older, journalists, as an editor, teacher and co-worker. At the Herald-leader she promoted a program of community columnists to bring more voices and perspectives to the pages. One of them was Teri Carter, whose work has since appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, MSNBC and regularly in the Kentucky Lantern.
'Vanessa was my teacher,' Carter said. 'It is no exaggeration to say that she made me a columnist when I thought I was too old, at age 51, to start. And boy was she tough. She asked hard questions; she was rigorous about sourcing and fact-checking; and she made sure I knew I had to earn readers' time. I loved her — love her — for that.'
They also became friends. 'She had an enormous heart, a pointed, wry sense of humor, and was an incredibly talented writer.' Carter said. She recalled that Gallman embraced the opportunities that awaited her when she retired in 2019, talking 'about how excited she was to become a student again, in a way, learning to craft her own stories.'
In retirement Gallman wrote columns for the Kentucky Lantern, took a class in writing in children's literature and edited 'Who Am I' a book of short memoirs from graduates of the UNC-Charlotte Black Studies program. She was an active member throughout her adult life of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and, in recent years, a dedicated and insightful member of a book club composed of female journalists.
She was a devoted daughter, mother and grandmother.
She is survived by her daughter, Erica Stinson (Maurice), grandchildren Kaylah (Eme), Kaleah (Alexis), Khaleed and Aisha in addition to siblings Cheryl, Candace and Jerry. She was preceded in death by her parents, Laura Petty and James Morehead and her sister Jean.
There will be a memorial service at the Lyric Theatre on Saturday, Feb. 15, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The family requests donations to Doctors Without Borders or God's Pantry.