This year, in addition to honoring those receiving their awards April 18, the Pulitzer Prizes will celebrate their 100th anniversary.
Four centennial marquee events have been planned to mark the occasion, spanning from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, to the Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass.
One of the celebrations, called “People, Presidency and the Press,” will take place at the George Bush Presidential Center in Dallas June 2-3.
The Dallas Morning News, LBJ Presidential Library and the George W. Bush Presidential Center will come together to examine important journalism, scholarship and art.
The symposium aims to “enrich the conversation around the values embodied by the Pulitzer Prize, especially as they relate to the U.S. presidency.”
The sold-out event is a collaboration between The Dallas Morning News, the Pulitzer Board and the presidential centers of George Bush, Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush.
The schedule includes a variety of sessions, like panel discussions with presidential biographers and excerpts from Pulitzer-winning, presidential plays.
Topics that will be discussed at the symposium include: “Presidential Biographies: The Challenges Then and Now,” “The Presidency: Coverage in the Digital Age,” “The Right to Know versus the Responsibility to Protect,” “Presidents and Poverty: The Fight that Never Ends” and “The Politics of Polarization: Can Democracy Survive?”
William McKenzie, the editorial director for the George W. Bush Presidential Center, has been involved with planning the event. Before working at the center, McKenzie was on the editorial board at The Dallas Morning News and won a Pulitzer alongside Colleen McCain Nelson and Tod Robberson in 2010.
“We’ll have a panel that will talk about presidents and the fight against poverty, and that will include Sharon Grigsby, who was the project leader for this Pulitzer we won,” McKenzie said.
Grigsby is an editorial writer and project manager for The Dallas Morning News.
The event is free and open to the public; however, as of now the event is full. Those interested in attending the event can register for the waitlist here.
