Beth Shelburne on How A Heart Attack and ‘Mugshot Parades’ Changed Her Life

Published by The Birmingham Times August 20, 2020

By Erica Wright

As a television news anchor and journalist for WBRC-TV Fox 6 News in Birmingham for nearly a decade, Beth Shelburne was welcomed across the metro viewing area with open arms. Since retiring and because of her advocacy, however, there’s one place she’s not particularly embraced.

“I’m not really welcome by the [State of Alabama] Department of Corrections. They barely even respond to me anymore, but I do have a network of people inside the prisons that I’m in regular contact with,” she said. “I have been into the prisons on multiple occasions, … [and] it opened up this whole world of more reporting.”

Shelburne, 45, is currently an investigative reporter for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alabama’s Campaign for Smart Justice, which fights to end mass incarceration by addressing reforms in the criminal justice system. She developed a passion for this type of work during her career as a journalist, but she really put her heart into it in the spring of 2018—literally.