Journalism department to host three Pulitzer Prize winners

Submitted by Charles Fedullo
Phone: (907) 474-7995
03/23/05

The University of Alaska Fairbanks journalism department will host three Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists this spring as part of the Snedden Guest Lecture Series, made possible by an endowment honoring former Fairbanks Daily News-Miner owner and publisher C.W. Snedden.

Pulitzer prize-winners Eric Nalder with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Julie Sullivan with The Oregonian and Tom French of the St. Petersburg Times are scheduled to visit UAF. Each will spend a week on campus working with journalism students and staff. They will also present a public lecture and visit with local reporters at a brown bag luncheon.

"These are three of the best and brightest reporters in America," said UAF Journalism Professor Brian O’Donoghue. "This is a thrill for the journalism students and department staff."

The UAF journalism department hopes to turn the Snedden Chair, funded by C.W.’s widow, Helen Snedden, into a semester or yearlong appointment by next year. An endowed Faculty Chair requires a donation to the university exceeding $2 million.

"Mrs. Snedden’s commitment to UAF provides the perfect catalyst to expand and enrich our students’ academic experience and enhance the journalism department’s reputation both across the state and at the national level," said UAF Chancellor Steve Jones.

Eric Nalder will be in Fairbanks March 28-April 2, Tom French will be here April 3-9 and Julie Sullivan will be here April 15-22.

Eric Nalder has received two Pulitzer Prizes, one for national reporting in 1990 and another for investigative reporting in 1997. He has published one book, "Tankers Full of Trouble," which won the Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for 1994. He has received more than 60 state, regional and national journalism awards.

Julie Sullivan is an investigative reporter at The Oregonian. She won her Pulitzer Prize as part of The Oregonian team that exposed serious flaws within U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. She got her start at the Frontiersman, an Alaska weekly newspaper in Wasilla.

Tom French earned his Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for the series "Angels & Demons," about the murder of three women visiting Florida. He started his career at the St. Petersburg Times soon after graduating from Indiana University almost 30 years ago. He began developing projects that grew into books. The first was a newspaper series titled "A Cry in the Night," an account of a dramatic murder investigation and trial that French turned into a book entitled "Unanswered Cries." A year reporting in a public high school produced the series and book "South of Heaven."