Contact: Leesa Brown, Assistant Vice President for Communication,
Ohio University, 1-740-593-1889; pager: 1-740-290-3329
ATHENS, Ohio (April 10, 2000) -- Kevin Noblet started his day here at 8 a.m. teaching a 200-level class in news writing. He will end it at around 8 this evening after he talks to graduate students studying international mass media in a class taught by a colleague at Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.
And, somewhere in between, he won a second Pulitzer Prize.
Aspiring reporters got a taste of the real thing today as they followed whoops of elation into a conference room where Associated Press Deputy International Editor Kevin Noblet was tracking the Pulitzer announcements via the Internet with fellow faculty members, including former AP foreign correspondent Terry Anderson, Acting Director of the School of Journalism Dan Riffe, and professor Michael Bugeja.
Noblet was a member of the Associated Press team that won a Pulitzer Prize for a series which uncovered alleged mass killings of South Korean citizens by American soldiers at the start of the Korean War.
It was a rare investigative reporting award for the wire service.
The series was a team endeavor which applied the basics, Noblet said. "What AP did was basic fundamental journalism. Our job was to let readers know what really happened ... we used no anonymous sources. It was all on the record. We confirmed ages, names, and hometowns. We used military archives, mapping, research."
Noblet, who is spending a year at Ohio University as the Scripps Howard Visiting Professional, later shared the excitement long-distance with some team members. AP special correspondent Charles J. Hanley, Martha Mendoza and Sang-hun Choe reported and wrote the series which ran last September. Researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to the report and Noblet edited the series. Noblet was also part of an AP team that won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1995.
Noblet's students here are extraordinarily fortunate, said Ohio University President Robert Glidden.
"An enormous amount of professional dedication and generous private support have made possible a moment like today's, when students have an opportunity to share in this rare kind of excitement," Glidden said. "Prizes and recognition notwithstanding, our students are privileged to have the level of personal attention and guidance from an individual at the top of his game who is so widely respected and admired. Kevin Noblet's devotion to honorably engaging in the profession of journalism is clear and it's undoubtedly one of the reasons we celebrate his success today."
"One of the things that is remarkable about this school is its relationship with Scripps Howard," Riffe said, "and one of the things they have supported is the program which every year brings in a visiting professional, like Kevin Noblet.
"How perfect to have a visiting professional funded by the Scripps foundation win while he's teaching here."
Former AP reporter Terry Anderson, who was a Scripps Howard visiting professional before he accepted a teaching post at Ohio University, agreed.
"Kevin is the perfect visiting professional," he said. " He's a solid reporter with a vast amount of practical experienceŠhow to gather news, edit, and how decisions are made in journalism. And he's shared all of that with the students.
"We spend a lot of time talking about journalism and its problems but this is a fine example of what you can do right. Today, we can say to the students, 'this is what it's about, guys, this is the real thing.' Isn't that thrilling? Look at the example they are getting--this is what you can do."
Kevin Noblet, though, was shortly operating again in wire service style -- "you've got five minutes to celebrate and then get to work." After sharing some champagne with the faculty, he was back in his office, fielding calls and thinking about the class he'll teach tomorrow in reporting contemporary issues. It's a class that his apprentices may never forget, although Noblet would likely prefer that they just remember the basics: "In a lot of ways it's what we're teaching kids in their very first classes, it's the fundamentals. And in AP's case the fundamentals were executed very well."
