How did you become involved with AJHA?

In beginning research for my University of Missouri Press book [Pulitzer's Gold], and after it came out, I gave a number of presentations around the country, often under the auspices of AJHA, which I joined before the book's first edition came out in 2006. I gave a number of talks for AJHA around the country in connection with early editions of the book. At the same time, I was teaching for Emerson College and was a senior editor at The Economist's monthly magazine, CFO, based at the time in Boston at the time. Before that I’d been a long-time Wall Street Journal reporter, serving in Pittsburgh first, and then, for nearly 20 years, in Los Angeles. During my journalism career, I continued to do research on the Public Service Pulitzer Prize—awarded in the form of its famous Gold Medal. 

How do your decades in journalism inform your research?

I was raised in a “newspaper family” in St. Louis, where my father, Roy J. Harris, was a Pulitzer-winning reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. (He was named in the citation when the Post-Dispatch and Chicago Daily News jointly won the 1950 Public Service Pulitzer.) Because my own career took me from the Post-Dispatch—as a reporter serving as a summer intern—to the Los Angeles Times, after my graduation from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in 1968, I became very familiar with the reporters and editors who had led Pulitzer-winning research. When I joined The Wall Street Journal (with its own Pulitzer-winning tradition) after getting my master's from Medill, and serving in the U.S. Army, I continued pursuing my interest in the Pulitzer Prizes, and the men and women who’d been involved with winning therm.

What surprised you most while researching the history of the Pulitzer Prize?

My earliest surprise was that so little had been written about the history of the Pulitzers, and especially the Public Service Prize. It seemed to cry out for research attention. And I decided to become the person to do it. The University of Missouri Press was most supportive, especially because I had so many “inside sources” from my Post-Dispatch years. The Post-Dispatch was the only paper to have won five Public Service Pulitzers over those early years. 

What topics or questions are you pursuing in your current research?

I continue to use the approach of digging into the “story behind the story” of how editors and reporters decide to pursue a project; to help it grow into a major story; and to perfect the work to the point that it qualifies for Pulitzer Prize contention. I found, in my research, that little had been written about the Pulitzer “award process,” as it had grown over the decades at Columbia University, which administers the Prizes. People who ran the Prizes seemed very excited that I was dedicating myself to digging into the “back stories” of the award system, as well as each winner. And in the end, Columbia University Press took over later editions of my book.

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of your research work?

In addition to continuing to write about prizewinning journalism, something I’ve done for more than two decades in my connection with Florida’s wonderful Poynter Institute. I am also very interested in music and musical theater. I have acted in community theater in Massachusetts for decades. But the Poynter Institute has been my main “hobby” with examples of my work for them available on their website.

I have also taught journalism course over the years—including at Emerson College in Boston—where I became more involved with AJHA, and occasionally writing for Intelligencer. I also enjoy traveling, and writing travel articles when I visit places in Europe and elsewhere. 

Roy J. Harris Jr. has written for The Washington Post, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Los Angeles Times, and The Economist. His website provides additional background on the current edition of Pulitzer's Gold: A Century of Public Service Journalism along with study guides for students.