Pulitzer Center Update June 10, 2024
Changing Times at the Pulitzer Center
Celebrating 18 years of impactful journalism and engagement
For 18 years, Jon Sawyer poured himself into building the Pulitzer Center from the ground up. His enthusiasm was contagious, and his dedication unbounded as he strengthened our global journalism and engagement ecosystem.
We celebrated Jon, his wife, Kem Knapp Sawyer, and the Pulitzer Center’s achievements—and its legacy—while gathering more than 120 friends and colleagues at a dinner in Washington, D.C., this week. We know they were only a fraction of the individuals Jon has impacted through the years by creating the Pulitzer Center.
The dinner marked a period of transitions at the Center: Jon, along with Kem, who directed the Reporting Fellows Program, and Board Chair Emily Rauh Pulitzer are stepping down from their positions this month. In their places, we welcome our new colleagues: incoming CEO and President Lisa Gibbs and incoming Reporting Fellows Director Karima Haynes. We also congratulate Dick Moore as our next board chair.
It was wonderful to hear reflections from a few of the individuals touched by the Pulitzer Center, personally and professionally, and of the important stories undertaken that would not have occurred without the Pulitzer Center’s support.
We heard from Emmy about Jon’s “most novel idea at the time,” when he came to her seeking seed funding to start the Pulitzer Center when many international news bureaus were closing. He told her it was “more important than ever that we know what was going on in the rest of the world.”
“To illuminate, as my late husband said, and with a deep sense of responsibility, interpret these troubled times,” she told the crowd.
Always looking ahead, Jon and Emmy shared news at the dinner of her exciting new challenge grant commitment: a $10 million endowment match against any multi-year support that the Pulitzer Center can raise. Jon also announced a major new gift from Dick Moore and his wife, Barbara: a five-year commitment of $500,000 per year in general operating support.
Please read more about the evening’s activities and watch a video recording. Join me in sending to Jon, Kem, and Emmy greetings we have heard from many of our friends and colleagues from around the world:
Congratulations. Thank you. We’ll miss you!
All the best,
Impact
In November 2019, Paulo Paulino Guajajara, a 26-year-old Indigenous leader, was killed allegedly by illegal loggers in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory of Brazil. The Pulitzer Center-supported project Blood Timber War, by grantee Karla Mendes, covered the case in 2023. A video about the killing was screened in Chile’s Supreme Court, and prosecutors hope international exposure will put pressure on officials to schedule a trial in Brazil. The Brazil trial could set a legal landmark as the first killing of an Indigenous land defender to go before a federal jury.
Read the full update in English and Portuguese.
Photo of the Week
“The story is a moment of redemption for Judy … It's a rare thing to have someone facing the fentanyl crisis get the opportunity to tell their own story.”
— Justin Maxon
This photo and more are currently on display at the Photoville Festival in New York City.
This message first appeared in the June 7, 2024, edition of the Pulitzer Center's weekly newsletter. Subscribe today.
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