By David Sher,

I have the deepest respect and admiration for people who are brave and unselfish enough to go out and make the world better.

Not people who talk about making the world better.

Not people who share articles about it on social media.

People who actually give something up — real comfort, real security, real stability — to go do the hard, unglamorous, sometimes thankless work that changes lives.

Beth Shelburne is one of those people, and soon folks from around the world will know her name.

Award Winning Journalist

Most people in our city recognize Beth from nearly a decade as a television anchor at WBRC Fox6 News. She was a fixture in Birmingham living rooms — credible, polished, trusted.

She had built that career over twenty years, working her way through newsrooms across the country before coming home to Birmingham. She had won an Emmy. She had won multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards, among the most prestigious honors in broadcast journalism.

She had everything a television journalist works a lifetime to achieve: a stable income, a respected platform, and a face that viewers invited into their homes every night.

And then she walked away from all of it.

Health Scare

The turning point came in 2018, when Beth suffered a heart attack while grocery shopping. That moment of confronting her own mortality pushed her to finally do what she felt truly called to do — devote herself completely to investigative journalism on criminal justice reform and Alabama’s prison crisis. Work she believed traditional media could never fully tell the way it needed to be told.

Let’s be honest about what that decision really meant. It wasn’t a lateral move. It wasn’t trading one comfortable job for another. It was stepping off a cliff. Independent journalism is financially precarious at the best of times.

Beth was giving up a guaranteed salary, the resources of a major television station, and the protection that comes with working inside a large institution. She was also choosing to report aggressively on the Alabama Department of Corrections — a subject that made her unwelcome in certain powerful circles.

Changing Lives

But she got to work.

Her reporting helped lead to the release of real human beings who had been wrongly imprisoned or trapped by unjust sentencing laws. Through her partnership with the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, her direct referrals contributed to the release of men who had served decades behind bars. She wasn’t just writing stories. She was changing lives.

In 2023, she released Earwitness, a deeply reported podcast she created, wrote, and produced, investigating the wrongful conviction of Toforest Johnson — a man who has spent more than 25 years on Alabama’s death row despite prosecutors themselves calling for a new trial. The series was critically acclaimed, but more importantly, it put a human face on an injustice the state of Alabama has quietly allowed to continue.

Oscar Nomination

Now, the work has reached the biggest stage in the world. Beth Shelburne is a co-producer of The Alabama Solution, an HBO documentary nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 98th Academy Awards. Chris Izor, an associate producer on the film, is also a Birmingham resident, living in Hoover.

The film is the result of six years of investigative work exposing the staggering violence and corruption inside Alabama’s prison system. During those six years, researchers documented 1,377 people who died in state facilities. Much of the footage was captured by incarcerated men themselves using contraband cell phones — men who risked serious punishment to make sure their story was told. Beth helped make sure the world could see it.

She joins a short and distinguished list of Birmingham natives recognized at Oscar time. Louise Fletcher, who grew up here, won Best Actress for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Daniel Scheinert, a Birmingham native, took home multiple Oscars including Best Picture for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Now Beth Shelburne carries Birmingham’s name to the Academy Awards ceremony.

What makes her story so powerful for our city is not just the nomination — it’s the example she sets. She had security and she chose purpose. She had comfort and she chose courage. She had a platform that many journalists spend their entire careers dreaming of, and she gave it up because she believed the work waiting on the other side of that leap was more important.

That is the definition of unselfishness. And that is exactly the kind of person who makes a city great.

Congratulations, Beth.

All of us in Birmingham are rooting for you and your amazing film.

The 98th Academy Awards (Oscars) will air live on ABC and stream on Hulu on Sunday, March 15th.

David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown.  He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).

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Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com