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Four Pulitzer Prize Winners Speak to The Atlanta Press Club

A robust discussion about journalists using pen and ink to document the American civil rights experience highlighted an Atlanta Press Club luncheon on Tuesday July 23 when four Atlanta based Pulitzer Prize recipients addressed seventy-five luncheon guests at The Commerce Club in downtown Atlanta.  The panel of Pulitzer recipients included two current journalists at the Atlanta Journal & Constitution, Mike Luckovich and Cynthia Tucker, and two former AJC journalists, Doug Blackmon and Hank KlibanoffBlackmon was honored with the 2009 Pulitzer for general nonfiction for his book “Slavery by Another Name:  the Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.”  Blackmon attacked the basic assumption that slavery ended with the Civil War.  The New York Times wrote that Blackmon’s book “describes free men and women forced into industrial servitude, bound by chains, faced with subhuman living conditions and subject to physical torture.”  All this well into the 20th Century.  Alabama, for instance, leased convicts to private businesses.  Blackmon is currently the Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta bureau chief.

Klibanoff, along with co-author Gene Roberts was honored with a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for their book “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation,” an examination of the role of media in the dynamic struggle for racial justice and civil rights.  Klibanoff is currently managing editor of “Cold Case Truth and Justice Report.”  Previously he was Atlanta Journal & Constitution managing editor.  Roberts is a former New York Times managing editor.  They collaborated for twelve years to create the book.

About their book, the New York Times Sunday Book Review wrote, “… the power of the pen and the camera has been memorable (in documenting the civil rights struggle).  Until now, however, no one has offered an in-depth analysis of how and why the news media came to play such an important role in the struggle for racial justice.”  In their book, the authors explained that black protest grew from within the black press, but it took the mainstream white press to show the rest of the nation what was happening in the South.

Luckovich is a two-time winner who earned his first editorial cartooning Pulitzer Prize in 1995 and his second in 2006.  Luckovich discussed his famous cartoon “WHY?” which inside the single word and the question mark included the handwritten names of some 2,000 American servicemen and women who lost their lives in the war that began after 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States.  Luckovich is syndicated in some 150 papers nationally.

Tucker won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.  During her career as the AJC’s opinion section editor Tucker has been frequently critical of those in highly influential circles, including former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, who is now a convicted felon, and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, whose controversial actions and comments eventually resulted in her ballot box ouster from the U.S. House of Representatives. Tucker will soon move to Washington to begin new work as the AJC’s national political columnist.  Atlanta’s scene will lose a journalist who never feared any fact or any person, as she freely thought about and commented on any issue, regardless of its political or racial stripes.

The next Press Club members’ event is on Thursday, June 25 when HBO will present a special showing of the documentary film “Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech.”  This is an invitation event for members of the Press Club and the Public Relations Society of America Georgia Chapter.  Time and location are 6:00 p.m. at the Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree Street N.E., Atlanta.  The next Press Club luncheon will host Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank on Friday, August 28.  Details about both events are located elsewhere on the Atlanta Press Club website.

Additional information about the books written by Douglas Blackmon, and Hank Klibanoff with Gene Roberts, can be obtained from the New York Times Sunday Book Review website. Mike Luckovich also donated an original cartoon for silent auction.  Luncheon guest Gene Greissman submitted the winning bid.

Tuesday’s luncheon was sponsored by the Cox Media Group.

Written by Mike Klein, APC Board Member