Pulitzer Center Update May 21, 2024
Spring 2024: Campus Consortium Programming Puts Quality Journalism at the Center of Classroom Conversations
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In Spring 2024, Pulitzer Center grantees participated in 98 events at Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium schools in the United States and Canada. In all, visiting journalists reached nearly 2,200 students. Together they discussed journalism careers and global challenges in the Pulitzer Center’s five focus areas: Climate and Environment, Global Health, Peace and Conflict, Human Rights, and Information and Artificial Intelligence.
Lisa Armstrong shared her reporting on youth incarceration to San Diego State University; Bukola Adebayo traveled from Lagos, Nigeria, to Hampton University to speak about underreported global health stories; Amy Maxmen led a class about vaccine inequity at McGill University; Hilke Schellmann helped students understand how AI tools had taken over hiring at Washington University and Benedictine University; Rosa Schwartzburg presented her investigation into the military’s use of video games in recruitment at Forsyth Technical College; and Maria Parazo Rose walked an audience of students, professors, and journalists at the University of Missouri through Grist’s open-sourced, big-data report Misplaced Trust, which documents how public colleges profit off of state trust lands.
Among visitors this spring were international journalists Jason Motlagh, Naipanoi Lepapa, Marzio Mian, and Alessandro Cosmelli who joined Pulitzer Center staff at multiple partner college and university campuses.
“I’m so grateful to have met Jason. I always knew what I wanted to do with my writing, but didn’t know how to get there. Jason showed me that it is possible!” said a University of Wisconsin Madison student after Motlagh, a long-time Pulitzer Center grantee and documentarian, spoke with their class.
“We were all captivated by [Motlagh’s] authentic storytelling and the students were inspired by his reflections of his career,” said Assistant Professor of Communications at University of Wisconsin Madison Kajsa Dalrymple. Cat Carroll, a University of Wisconsin Madison third-year and Managing Editor of the Badger Herald, interviewed Motlagh. Motlagh also visited the University of Richmond. Gareth Woo, a Richmond second-year, wrote about his visit for The Collegian. Motlagh recently reported Tracking War Crimes in Myanmar with support from the Pulitzer Center for Rolling Stone Magazine.
Lepapa, an investigative reporter from Nairobi, Kenya and 2023 Pulitzer Center AI Accountability Fellow visited three Campus Consortium schools, the University of Texas at Austin, and two K-12 schools in March 2024. Lepapa shared her reporting on low-cost global surrogacy networks as part of the Pulitzer Center-supported international collaboration, The Baby Broker Project.
“I enjoyed learning about a global issue that I otherwise would not have had an opportunity to know about,” said one student at Glendale Community College. Stella Mackler, co-editor-in-chief of the Davidsonian wrote in detail about Lepapa’s Dean Rusk Lecture at Davidson College.
Mian and Cosmelli spoke at Campus Consortium Partner Northwestern University and two other universities, University of Michigan and Indiana University. They also gave an artist talk at the Bronx Documentary Center, where they presented their work following the Volga river. The river carves the history and geography of Russia. Harper's Magazine published Volga Blues in January, 2024.
We encourage our Campus Consortium Reporting Fellow alumni to share their reporting projects at partner schools. This year, Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellows presented their work at American University and University of Chicago.
To mark the 10-year anniversary of the Pulitzer Center’s partnership with American University, Kara Andrade—one of AU’s first reporting fellows—joined Betilde Muñoz-Pogossia, Douglas Farah, and Steven Dudley. They discussed authoritarianism and humanitarian crises in South America. Andrade’s 2015 Reporting Fellowship project, Mexico: Technology, Civic Participation, and Accountability, investigated the rise of platforms like Méxicoleaks and social media organizing in Mexico.
At the University of Chicago, Post-Grad reporting fellow Miho Ouyou joined her reporting partner Minsha Ouyou and Guia Baggi, a Pulitzer Center grantee and environment reporter working in the Mediterranean. They discussed ocean health. Baggi reported from the Mediterranean on an invasive species of blue crab. Miho and Minsha Ouyou looked into concerns about safety and seafood commerce that arose after Japan announced it would release water irradiated by the 2011 Fukushima reactor meltdown into the sea. Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Kathleen Blackburn, who moderated the conversation, thanked the panelists for “sharing [their] brilliant and impactful work with our students.”
The spring semester also included workshop and seminar programming at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Wake Forest, and William & Mary. Students build and test skills in visual and written journalism by working hands-on with Pulitzer Center grantees.
Stephanie Hanes, Pulitzer Center grantee and climate and environment reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, completed two Campus Consortium visits in addition to supervising the Sharp Seminar at William & Mary College; During the annual Sharp Seminar, Hanes and Campus Consortium and Outreach Program Director Ann Peters guide a small group of students through for-credit reporting projects.
Hanes said: “Visiting classes and talking with students through the Pulitzer Center's Campus Consortium reminds me why my job is so great and also gives me so much hope for the future of journalism.”
She shared lessons from her work on The Climate Generation during her visits at Hunter College and Texas Christian University. Sara Devendorf, a William and Mary Sharp seminar student, told Charles Center staff that she “learned much about how to represent sources honestly and effectively in journalistic writing. [...] [The course] opened [her] eyes to many post-grad career options that I never considered before.”
Justin Cook joined 2011 Reporting Fellow and photojournalism lecturer, Julia Rendleman, for a photojournalism workshop at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Cook said “teaching and learning from these students renewed my faith in my work and the mission of journalism.”
Cook led a for-credit photojournalism workshop for students at Wake Forest University in the Spring 2024 semester, similar to one he led a year earlier at the campus. His Pulitzer Center-supported visual project, Origins, frames how America’s oldest town founded by formerly enslaved Black people, Princeville, North Carolina, is building climate resilience. Cook also produced Tide and Time, a Pulitzer Center-supported project.
We encourage you to read more about our Campus Consortium programming. In addition to campus visits, the Pulitzer Center works with our Campus Consortium partners to select and support student Reporting Fellows working on independent projects. Stay tuned for our announcement of the Class of 2024.
