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Date 4-27-06
Contact David Tisdale 601.266.4499
WITH PHOTOS
Hattiesburg—University
of Southern Mississippi alumni are among news teams at the Biloxi
Sun-Herald and New Orleans Times-Picayune newspapers
that won the Pulitzer Prize, the top award in journalism, for their
efforts covering the impact of Hurricane Katrina on their respective
communities.
Both publications
shared the Pulitzer in the Public Service Category, while the Times-Picayune
won a Pulitzer in the Breaking News Category.
Southern Miss
graduates who worked on the news team at the Sun Herald
include Ricky Mathews; Jamie Bates; Tim Isbell; Jared Head; Arthur
Jaramillo; Pam Firmin; Lisa Monti; Scott Hawkins; Anita Lee; Geoff
Pender; Tammy Smith; Sharon Fitzhugh; John Bialas; and Karen Nelson.
At the Times-Picayune, Southern Miss graduates on the news
team include Chuck Cook, Ted Jackson and Leslie Williams.
Mathews, who
serves as Sun-Herald publisher, thanked his staff for their
hard work and cited how vital their role is in the community, especially
following an event like Hurricane Katrina.
“What is most
important to a newspaper is the service it provides to the reader,”
Mathews said. “At the end of the day we serve a community. In the
days after the storm we were the only way people could get the news.”
Ted Jackson,
a veteran photographer with the Times-Picayune, said while
the newspaper’s staff was thrilled with their awards, the celebration
that followed was in stark contrast to the one held by the paper
when it received a Pulitzer in 1997.
“Back then we
had a brass band and champagne, but this time it was much more somber,
when we pondered the losses from the storm – and that was appropriate,
I thought,” Jackson said.
Jackson credited
his academic training at Southern Miss for the fact that he even
chose photojournalism as a profession. “If it hadn’t been for USM
and Ed Wheeler (Jackson’s professor) and the photojournalism program,
I would be doing something totally different,” he said.
“It gave me
the foundation and the inspiration to do this work. And Ed Wheeler,
I can’t say enough about him and his dedication to photojournalism
that inspires me to excellence, because that’s what you’re hoping
for and working for.”
Times-Picayune
editor Jim Amoss praised Jackson and the rest of the newspaper’s
staff for their “heroic” efforts in the face of what has been described
as the worst natural disaster to hit the U.S. in modern times.
“Our staff performed
heroically under the most stressful conditions imaginable, including
risking their lives and, for many, working in the knowledge that
they had lost all their worldly possessions,” Amoss said. “Ted Jackson
braved extraordinary circumstances to capture some of the most memorable
images. And he kept at it for days, never flagging.”
Mike Lacy, a
1978 Southern Miss graduate who works as a special projects coordinator
for the Sun Herald, said that while winning the Pulitzer
is a wonderful validation of the staff’s work, the real reward is
in the paper’s community service role.
“One of my mentors
once said to me ‘Journalism is one of the noblest careers you can
have’ and I agree with that,” Lacy said. “You feel good when you
do something that has a positive result, and I think what we did
during Katrina had a positive result. We didn’t have to have a Pulitzer
to know we were doing the right thing.”
For more information,
contact David Tisdale at 601.266.4499.
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