Dr. Donna Lampkin Stephens
Dr. Donna Lampkin Stephens, associate professor of journalism at the University of Central Arkansas, was part of the 10th class inducted into the Arkansas Sportscasters/Sportswriters Hall of Fame on July 9, 2016.
“I am humbled and honored to join a group that includes many of the icons of Arkansas sports writing,” said Stephens. “To be listed along with them is one of the highest honors of my life.”
Stephens was a sportswriter for the Arkansas Gazette from 1984 until its merger in 1991. Her beats covered high school sports, golf, the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference and the Arkansas Razorbacks. Since then, she has freelanced for numerous Arkansas publications. After teaching in Arkansas public schools, Stephens came to UCA in 1999.
She produced documentary films such as “The Old Gray Lady: Arkansas’s First Newspaper” (2006), which tells the history of the Arkansas Gazette, and “The Crisis Mr. Faubus Made: The Role of the Arkansas Gazette in the Central High Crisis” (2010).
Her dissertation from the University of Southern Mississippi, “If It Ain’t Broke, Break It: How Corporate Journalism Killed the Arkansas Gazette,” won an honorable mention in the American Journalism Historians Association 2013 Margaret A. Blanchard Dissertation Prize contest and was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2015.