The Tennessean, the principal daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee, has honored the late Getahn Ward, an awarding-winning Black journalist who served as a business reporter for the paper. A conference room in the newspaper’s headquarters will be named in his honor.
Ward, an alumnus and adjunct professor at historically Black Tennessee State University in Nashville, died in 2016 at the age of 45. The multimedia room in the university’s department of communications is also named in honor of Getahn Ward.
Ward was a native of the African nation of Liberia and immigrated to the United States in 1991. After graduating from Tennessee State University, Ward was hired as a business reporter for the Nashville Banner. When that paper ceased publication, Ward joined the staff at The Tennessean, where he focused on city real estate.
Following Ward’s death, Tennessee State University, The Tennessean, the Gannett Foundation and the National Association of Black Journalists partnered to create a scholarship in Ward’s name to benefit aspiring journalists. The scholarship is the first endowed scholarship in the history of the department of communications at the university.
