The Impact of Trauma Coverage

Three Oklahoma universities, the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum and the international Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma are combining to present two days of events to commemorate the centennial of the Pulitzer Prize.

The events with the theme “Pulitzer Prize Centennial: The Impact of Trauma Coverage” will be at the University of Central Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma and The University of Tulsa on Sept. 28-29. Featuring past and current Pulitzer Prize winners, the events will be free and open to the public.

“Oklahoma has many connections to the Pulitzer Prize, one of our country’s most coveted honors,” Planning Committee Chairman Joe Hight said. “We felt it was important to incorporate trauma coverage as the theme because of its impact on Oklahoma and the world. Recent terrorist attacks only serve to reinforce that emphasis.”

The events, which commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize, will also feature a specially produced tribute by the National Memorial on Anthony Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner from Oklahoma. Shadid, who also was an author, died in 2012 while on assignment in Syria for The New York Times.    

 “Anthony was a friend to many of us in this state and to Oklahoma as he returned to speak here often. We thought it was important during these events to remember his contributions to journalism,” Hight said.

The University of Tulsa will begin the two days of events at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 28, with “From Watchdog to Spotlight: Journalists Exposing Systemic Abuse” at the Lorton Performance Center. It will feature Boston Globe Editor-at-Large Walter “Robby” V. Robinson, who led the “Spotlight” investigative team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage about the widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests, and an ongoing cover-up of pedophilia by the Boston Archdiocese. Actor Michael Keaton portrayed Robinson in the movie Spotlight that won “Best Picture” in this year’s Academy Awards. 

To kick off the Tulsa event, Robinson will be interviewed in a wide-ranging conversation about investigating trauma, reporting about sexual abuse, what it is like to be interviewed in a movie, and other topics. The public will be invited to send in questions ahead of the interview.

Then Robinson will be featured on a panel with Tulsa World Executive Editor Susan Ellerbach; Ziva Branstetter, Editor-in-Chief of The Frontier in Tulsa; and Hight, the endowed chair of journalism ethics at the University of Central Oklahoma. Hight was editor when The Gazette in Colorado Springs won the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting in 2014 for a story about dishonorable discharges, and Branstetter and Ellerbach were part of the Tulsa World team that was a Pulitzer finalist in 2015 for their stories on the botched executions at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Elana Newman, the McFarlin Professor of Psychology, affiliate faculty of communication at Tulsa and research director of the Dart Center, will also participate along with Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor for the Nation and executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Newman is also co-chair of the Planning Committee.

At 10:30 a.m. the following morning on Thursday, Sept. 29, the University of Oklahoma will be the host for a panel discussion on “The Culture of Trauma Coverage Before and After the Internet” in the Edith Kinney Gaylord Auditorium at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. It will feature Hailey Branson Potts, a reporter who was a member of the Los Angeles Times’ team that won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the San Bernardino terrorist attack.  Other featured panelists at the OU event will include Ed Kelley, an Editor & Publisher Editor of the Year who is now dean of the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication; Hannah Allam, a foreign correspondent who is now with McClatchy Newspapers’ Washington Bureau; John Schmeltzer, an OU professor who won the Pulitzer Prize when he was at the Chicago Tribune, and Shapiro, the Dart Center’s Executive Director.

At 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, a panel at the University of Central Oklahoma will discuss “Research on Journalists and Coverage of Trauma” at the Liberal Arts College’s Pegasus Theater. Kari Watkins, Executive Director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, will introduce the special tribute to Anthony Shadid. Newman will then begin the panel by describing the current status of research about journalists and trauma scholarship conducted at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and elsewhere, including preliminary findings on a study about Pulitzer winners who have covered victims of tragedy. Newman will be joined by Raymond McCaffrey, a former Washington Post reporter and editor who now is the director of the Center for Ethics in Journalism at the University of Arkansas. The other panelists will be Kenna Griffin, a former reporter for The Oklahoman who is now an Assistant Professor at Oklahoma City University, and Desiree Hill, a former TV news executive who now teaches at UCO. All the panelists are educators who have completed or are conducting ongoing research about journalists’ occupational health and/or dilemmas in covering trauma. 

Immediately after the panel at 3:15 p.m., the two-day event will end with Mike Boettcher, a war correspondent, documentarian and Visiting Professor at OU, interviewing Branson Potts and Charles Porter IV, a citizen journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his photo of firefighter Chris Fields carrying Baylee Almon in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Porter now lives in Fort Worth. The interview will focus on the ethical and emotional challenges in covering disasters and terrorism. As with Robinson, the public will be invited to send in questions before the interview.

Sponsors for Oklahoma’s Pulitzer Centennial events are the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, Robert Lorton Sr., Robert Lorton Jr. and Roxana Lorton, the following University of Tulsa entities: The Social Sciences Interest Group, Henry Kendall College of Arts and Sciences; the Tulsa Institute of Trauma, Adversity and Injustice; and the Department of Communication. Partners in planning for and organizing the event are the Oklahoma Press Association, University of Central Oklahoma Mass Communication Department, University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, The University of Tulsa and the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.

Planning Committee members are Hight, Kelley, Newman and Watkins; David Craig and Elanie Steyn, Gaylord College, University of Oklahoma; Mary Carver, University of Central Oklahoma Mass Communication; Lisa Sutliff, Oklahoma Press Association; and Mary Ann Eckstein, the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.