“I’m Monica Kaufman and Here’s What’s Happening”

From the post:

It was a good thing that her preschool daughter spent the night before with Clinton Deveaux, the municipal court judge who is now her ex-husband after a disappointing six-year marriage, because for Monica Kaufman, the most visible media personality in Atlanta after 10 years as co-anchor at WSB television, this is not a day for dallying.

Read Paul Hemphill’s 1986 feature on the anchor

Happy Flashback Friday!

Photograph by David Carter

Anchor Woman: The Story of Monica Pearson

From the article:

As Monica Jones Kaufman Pearson (the anchor changed her professional name following her 2005 marriage to police officer John Pearson Sr.), sixty-four, exits the WSB-TV airwaves this month—thirty-seven years, thirty Emmys, and more than 15,000 hours of television later—she is the city’s most recognizable media figure. “There is no king in Atlanta TV news,” says longtime coanchor Wes Sarginson. “Only a queen. And our queen is Monica.” Pearson’s debut on the six o’clock Action News in 1975 literally changed the face of Atlanta television. She has interviewed presidents and witnessed history, but Pearson’s biggest story remains her own.

In the summer of ‘75, when the South’s largest TV station called Pearson at WHAS-TV in Louisville to ask if she would consider coming for a job interview, Pearson had no idea that Channel 2 was seeking a minority hire for its prime newscast. WSB-TV station manager Don Elliot Heald was a white, progressive Southern transplant from Concord, Massachusetts, who was determined that WSB reflect the city it served. He had hired Lo Jelks as the station’s first African American reporter in the late 1960s. In 1973 he put Jocelyn Dorsey on air at noon as the station’s first African American female anchor. One of her initial reporting assignments was to cover white supremacist J.B. Stoner announcing his run for lieutenant governor at the Biltmore hotel. “When I walked in, the first thing I heard was ‘Kill the nigger!’” Dorsey recalls. Dorsey knew she wasn’t in the running for the six o’clock job. “I was pretty rowdy and militant back then,” she says. “I was too busy fighting with management about my afro.”

Read Rich Eldredge’s full feature article

Plus: Her thoughts on the biggest stories of her career and our archival feature on her from 1986

Illustration by Stanley Chow

Flashback Friday: “Wait, Are You in My Yoga Class?”

According to Entertainment Weekly, twenty-year veteran actor Christine Lakin, of Step by Step fame, is launching a web series in July.

From our 2011 feature on the actress:

There’s a starlet in my car. She pulled open the pollen-dusted door and slid into the dog-hair-covered front seat, her delicate, sandaled feet resting in the mess of caramel crème wrappers, lipstick-blotted napkins, and newspaper delivery bags on the floor mat. Said detritus was not removed from my car prior to serving as actress chariot. That’s not because said actress is unimpressive, though the fact that she had second billing under Paris Hilton—and wore prosthetic brown teeth, a fake mole, and rotting toenails—in a 2008 film called The Hottie and the Nottie might lead you to think otherwise. Christine Lakin is on the cusp.

Read Christine Van Dusen’s full story

Read EW’s post on her new web series

At 80, Larry Hagman remains devilish as J.R. scores a scheming son in TNT’s Dallas relaunch

Top Chef 9.6 recap: Cue the “Dallas” theme music

From the post:

This couldn’t be a more appropriate episode for me to pinch-hit recap for Christine Van Dusen (whose issue-laden Samsung TV currently sits in a Marietta repair shop). I worked as the dining critic at the Dallas Morning News in 2007 and 2008, so the terrain on this stretch of Top Chef: Texas looks mighty familiar. From the balcony views, it appears that Bravo has housed the cheftestants in the Uptown neighborhood, roughly the Dallas equivalent of Atlanta’s Midtown.

Read Bill Addison’s recap

RHOA Recap: Phaedra serves Bob Whitfield a bologna sandwich (on white bread!), Bar One opens

From the post:

Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann are two weeks away from downloading Kim’s newest hit single, their six-plus pound kid. Dr. Hood, Kim’s ob/gyn is still having flashbacks from her last delivery. He tells Kroy, “She was using combinations of words that I don’t think are anatomically possible and that I know are illegal in at least two states.” Kroy, meanwhile, is going to make an amazing Lamaze partner. “You just have to get past the shoulders,” he coaches. (FYI to Kroy: Not everything Mike Smith utters is applicable off the field in Flowery Branch.)

Read Rich Eldredge’s blog post

RHOA recap: Behold the inception of Chateau Sheree, house hubbys Apollo and Peter throw down

From the post:

Apollo responds by pointing out Peter’s resemblance to international instant rice mogul Uncle Ben. Peter gets up in the younger house hubby’s grill and taunts: “If I’m so old, bring it!” For Apollo, this is the moment in the episode where being married to a thoughtful, skilled, reasonable litigator could come in handy. Says Phaedra: “Apollo’s off parole so he could beat him up!”

Read Rich Eldredge’s blog post

RHOA Recap: Phaedra blings out a funeral, Sheree and NeNe engage in a “grown lady discussion”

From the post:

As the fourth season of RHOA unhinged its jaws on Bravo Sunday night, a very pregnant Kim Zolciak and her 25-year-old Atlanta Falcons defensive end boy toy Kroy Biermann move into their new home, “Celebrity Apprentice” veteran NeNe Leakes is newly single after separating from hubby Gregg, singer-songwriter Kandi Burruss is pondering the launch of Bedroom Kandi, a line of adult toys, runway model Cynthia Bailey is starting her own modelling agency, aspiring thespian Sheree Whitfield has a business-related beef with NeNe and Atlanta attorney Phaedra Parks is moonlighting as a funeral planner. Why not unscrew the top off a bottle of “extra sweet white wine” and join us for the recap fun here at our lavish new digs at the Housewives Home Office. Or as we lovingly refer to it: HHO Central.

Read Rich Eldredge’s blog post