Ohio Pulitzer website created to honor winners in the last century

ONA Ohio Pulitzer website header

A team of students and three faculty members from the department of journalism and public relations created a website honoring Ohio Pulitzer Prize winners as part of an initiative conceived by the Ohio Newspaper Association in conjunction with the centennial celebration of the Pulitzer Prizes.

2016 marks the 100th awarding of the Pulitzer Prizes, and journalism professionals all across the country are celebrating the centennial of journalism’s most prestigious award with four marquee events, several campfire initiatives and many smaller state programs and activities.

Dennis Hetzel, the executive director of the ONA and a life-long newspaper journalist, approached BGSU about creating a website and Ohio University about creating a video on Ohio’s Pulitzer Prize winners that would be unveiled as part of panel discussion to be held during the group’s 2016 annual convention on Feb. 17-18.

Pulitzer Prize winner George Rodrigue moderated the discussion on where journalism is going in changing times. Panelists were Kurt Franck of The Blade, who directed the Pulitzer-winning series on Tiger Force; Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post, who was part of the Pulitzer-winning team at the Boston Globe who covered the Boston Marathon bombing; and Doug Oplinger of the Akron Beacon Journal, who was an editor on two of the paper’s Pulitzers.

Student journalists and web developers from the Department of Journalism and Public Relations included Marissa Barenbrugge, a senior in the multiplatform sequence; Sami Fisher, a senior in the multiplatform sequence; Annie Furia, a junior in the multiplatform sequence; Lindsey Gump, a sophomore in the public relations sequence; and Rob Stephens, a journalism and public relations minor.

Faculty journalists and web developers included Nancy Brendlinger, associate professor; Jim Foust, professor; and Kelly Taylor, lecturer.

Nancy Earle, at Columbia University, is the Pulitzer Prize Centenntial Project Manager. In an email to Hetzel after viewing the site and video, Earle wrote, “This is just great work, Dennis and a fantastic collaboration.”

Hetzel told Earle ONA is urging their publishers to take this into their buildings and out into the communities.

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