Pulitzer Prize winner to headline student journalism conference
Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston
David Cay Johnston, a 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner, will be the keynote speaker at the Fredonia chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2019 conference on Saturday, Nov. 16.
Also on the bill for the event, which starts at 11 a.m. in Williams Center Room 103 — will be Fredonia alumni including WKBW-TV news anchor Jeff Russo, Buffalo News columnist Sean Kirst and Buffalo Bills video associate producer Andrew Meyer.
Mr. Johnston received the Pulitzer for his reporting on loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code while he was reporting for the New York Times. He was also a Pulitzer finalist in 2000 and 2003. Johnston is the author of seven books. The most recent, released in 2018, is “It's Even Worse Than You Think; What the Trump Administration is Doing to America.” Johnston is also the co-founder of DCreport.org, a journalism non-profit that bills itself as “a unique, non-profit news service that reports what the President and Congress DO, not what they SAY. We are founded on core investigative journalism principles of research, fact-checking, and reporting in plain English how you and your family are affected by what happens in Washington, D.C.”
Johnston’s keynote talk will start at noon.
Mr. Russo, a news anchor at WKBW-TV since 2015, started with the station in 2003. He was named sports director in 2007.
Mr. Kirst, an award-winning columnist and storyteller, received the Ernie Pyle Award for Human Interest Storytelling, among other honors. He has been at The Buffalo News since 2017. Before that, he spent 27 years at the Syracuse Post-Standard, becoming a Central New York legend along the way.
Mr. Meyer, a 2013 alumnus of the Journalism program at Fredonia, worked as a topical producer at WIVB-TV news in Buffalo before moving to Canisius College, where he produced video and worked with the college’s ESPN broadcasts. He joined the Bills video team during the past summer.
For more information, contact Fredonia SPJ President Patrick Ryan via email at pryan1@fredonia.edu or advisers Elmer Ploetz (ploetz@fredonia.edu) and Mike Igoe (igoe@fredonia.edu).
