Converging Centennials: America's Pulitzer Prizes and the World's Great War

This presentation by Roy Harris, author of “Pulitzer’s Gold: A Century of Public Service Journalism” (just out in a new edition) discusses the growth of the most prestigious awards for U.S. journalism, as well as for arts and letters, and notes how their origins were deeply entwined with America’s involvement in World War I.

Taking the audience through the development of the prizes -- and especially the Pulitzer public service gold medal -- Harris will note how Boston plays a key role in the history. Two winning stories he will mention: The Boston Post’s uncovering of Roaring Twenties fraud artist Charles Ponzi, and the Boston Globe’s revelations 12 years ago about sexual abuse of parishioners by Catholic priests, and the Church coverup of the scandal.