The West Virginia Humanities Council and the Reed College of Media will present “Path to the Pulitzer: Journalism and the Informed Citizen” April 4 at 7 p.m. in Ming Hsieh Hall. The panel presentation features two award-winning journalists: 2017 Pulitzer winner Eric Eyre of the Charleston Gazette-Mail and Eric Newhouse of Charleston who received a 2000 Pulitzer while with the Great Falls (Montana) Tribune.
Eyre and Newhouse will discuss their Pulitzer-winning works, the importance of pursuing complex stories, and the role journalism plays in fostering an informed citizenry. The program is free and open to the public and will include question and answer sessions with the audience. Refreshments will be served following the program where audience members may meet the speakers.
Eyre received a Pulitzer in 2017 for Investigative Reporting for his Charleston Gazette-Mail series “Painkiller Profiteers” that was noted by the Pulitzer committee for “courageous reporting, performed in the face of powerful opposition, to expose the flood of opioids flowing into depressed West Virginia counties with the highest overdose death rates in the country.”
Newhouse served as the Associated Press bureau chief in Charleston during the mid-1980s before going to the Great Falls Tribune in Great Falls, Montana. In 2000 he received a Pulitzer for his series “Alcohol: Cradle to the Grave” that the Pulitzer committee called a “vivid examination of alcohol abuse and the problems it creates in the community.”
“It’s exciting for us to be able to showcase journalism of this caliber. Nowadays, with the very basis of objective reporting being challenged, we need more than ever to listen to people like these West Virginians who have won the top prize in the field,” said Humanities Council Executive Director Ken Sullivan.
The program is part of the “Democracy and the Informed Citizen” initiative administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils. The initiative seeks to deepen the public’s knowledge and appreciation of the vital connections between democracy, the humanities, journalism, and an informed citizenry. Support for this event was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
For information, contact Erica Lindsay at 304.293.7016 or erica.lindsay@mail.wvu.edu.