The Pulitzer Prizes announced Monday that the Poynter Institute for Media Studies is among the organizations chosen to host events for the organization’s centennial anniversary next year. According to the press release, other partners include The Dallas Morning News, the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum; the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard; and the Los Angeles Times and USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
All marquee events will be free of charge and open to the public. The first will be at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., in late March 2016. Press coverage focusing on social justice and equality – past, present and future – will be the central theme. Poynter plans a two-day event with visual, dramatic and musical performances, workshops and discussions.
“At the same time we honor the path-breaking work of the last century, we will seize this opportunity to explore journalism’s role in addressing inequality in the next century,” said Tim Franklin, the institute’s president.
Poynter’s events, on March 31 and April 1 of 2016, is titled “The Voices of Social Justice and Equality,” according to a press release from Poynter.
“Like the Pulitzer Prizes, the Poynter Institute is dedicated to the highest standards of journalism, and we welcome this partnership,” said Paul Tash, chairman of the Poynter Institute and former chairman of the Pulitzer Prizes. “During the struggle for civil rights, brave writers and photographers revealed the ugly brutality of racial discrimination, earning journalism’s greatest honor. But more important, their work nudged public officials and sentiment toward the American promise of equal opportunity. The program at Poynter next year will celebrate not only the centennial of the Pulitzers, but the power of great journalism to make a difference in democracy.”
Other events for the centennial celebrations include a look at American coverage of war and migration in May from the L.A. Times and the Annenberg School, “The People, the Presidency and the Press,” with the Morning News and several presidential libraries in June, and a program at Nieman in September focusing on “power, accountability and abuse.”
