Roy Harris is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and editor who has also edited and written for online news sites and magazines. He is the author of the 2008 book "Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism," published by the University of Missouri Press, and brought out in an updated 2010 paperback version. The president of the ASBPE Foundation, an educational nonprofit affiliated with the American Society of Business Publication Editors, he was ASBPE's national president from 2005 to 2007. Most recently he was editorial director, until April 2012, of CFOworld, an online corporate-finance startup created in January 2011 by International Data Group, based in Framingham, Mass. Previously, he served as senior editor for 15 years for what was then The Economist Group's CFO Magazine, a 450,000-circulation, Boston-based publication, also helping run its CFO.com website. In 23 years with The Journal he spent two decades in Los Angeles, with six years as deputy chief of the 14-member L.A. bureau. Early in his career he served stints reporting for the Los Angeles Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. An authority on the Pulitzer Prizes, he contributes often to Poynter Online on that and other topics. He also has served on the adjunct journalism faculty at Boston's Emerson College, where he originated a class in "impact journalism." He lives in Hingham, MA.
There’s no question that the investigative soul of The Patriot-News now resides largely with its first Pulitzer Prize-winner: 24-year-old Sara Ganim, whose reporting of alleged sexual abuse by an ex-Penn State football coach shook the paper’s 67,000 central Pennsylvania… Read more
With its once-plentiful Pulitzer Prize juror leaks now plugged, handicapping the year’s premier journalism awards is harder these days. To predict who and what will win Pulitzer stardom now involves scanning what most think of as lesser constellations: contests younger… Read more
There’s an old joke that refers to newspapers as “the daily miracle.” But one edition a decade ago, assembled by Wall Street Journal staffers on Sept. 11, 2001, was truly miraculous.
First, it was astounding that the Journal could be… Read more
The New York Times retrospective on the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — an enterprise that includes the currently online “Portraits Redrawn,” and a special Sunday, Sept. 11, print section under the heading “The Reckoning” – is… Read more
In the run-up to last year’s Pulitzer Prizes, the rumor mill furiously churned over the National Enquirer’s coverage exposing the marital infidelity of one-time Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards. First, reports circulated that it would be barred from the Pulitzer competition. (It… Read more
Looking back, it’s hard to imagine how Martin Baron, or any brand-new editor, could have had a stronger start than he did his first day at the Boston Globe. Within hours of his inaugural morning staff meeting, Baron “lit the… Read more
Maybe it’s because “Team of Rivals” was my bedside reading here in Las Vegas. But it’s hard not to think of the 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in historical terms.
How long ago was it that surly, investigative… Read more
The classic movie-industry question — How much added value does a film get from an Oscar? — rarely gets asked about newspapers and Pulitzer Prizes. There, the answer is clearer: not much, if anything.
Thus, Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C., owner… Read more
It wasn’t until Daniel Gilbert went to the University of Chicago a few years ago that he first started reading newspapers. He liked them — so much, in fact, that he joined the student Maroon his junior year, eventually… Read more
Pulitzer Prizes often recognize the greatness of newspapers under pressure. New Orleans’s Times-Picayune and Mississippi’s Sun Herald overcame nearly impossible odds to inspire readers during the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The Pulitzer was theirs. The Grand Forks… Read more