Pulitzer-winning Berzon '01 discusses journalism's future

When Alexandra Berzon '01 graduated from Vassar, she had already established herself as a dedicated journalist for The Miscellany News. By the time she returned to campus this past Monday, Nov. 16, Berzon had attached to her name an extensive journalistic career that has taken her to the Las Vegas Sun and The Wall Street Journal. Most notably, however, Berzon captured the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for a series of articles published in the Las Vegas Sun.

At Monday night's lecture, entitled "Reporting the Local News: How a Vassar Grad Won the Pulitzer Prize in an Era of Newspaper Decline," Berzon detailed the research process behind the series and, in her own words, the unexpected Pulitzer win. The series detailed the unsafe and sometimes fatal working conditions for construction workers on the Las Vegas strip. The series highlighted the high death rate among the construction workers and exposed the loosely-enforced safety regulations. Berzon explained that she "gave a voice to the families of lost fathers and sons," and thereby "exposed the red tape" of safety management.

Berzon told the audience of the numerous difficulties she encountered while writing the series. The articles required that she become an expert on both the casino industry and the construction industry, areas in which she had little background. To research properly, she stressed, "you have to ask dumb questions first." Following this, Berzon tenaciously pursued the appropriate authorities for interviews and valuable information, despite experiencing stonewalling from her interviewees and receiving several threats in her effort.

The series of over 50 stories and editorials not only won the Pulitzer Prize, but also received the Scripps Howard Award for Public Service Reporting and several regional awards.

Berzon's prolific career began when she joined The Miscellany News at the beginning of her freshman year at Vassar with no prior experience in journalism and no idea that she would eventually pursue it as a career.

Once in the newsroom, she felt that she had "found the thing"—meaning she had discovered her niche at Vassar. She liked writing for The Miscellany News because, as a reporter, she got to learn about "some of everything."

Berzon explained that she enjoyed working with a small community of people who were all creating something that had an "impact on the community." From her time at the newspaper, she realized that journalism could have a tangible impact on issues.

Berzon vividly recalls a series she wrote on faculty diversity at Vassar while working for The Miscellany News. The series pointed to the low number of faculty of color and looked at different sides of this issue. She explored such issues as whether post-course evaluations were biased and whether the denial of tenure to a faculty member was affected by race. Berzon explored these issues in order to uncover a possible factor in the limited diversity of the Vassar faculty.

Upon graduating in 2001 as an urban studies major, Berzon did not immediately pursue journalism, but instead worked in public policy. Soon after, she realized that she was happiest during the time she was working on The Miscellany. Still unsure about her future career, she applied to many different types of graduate schools and ended up attending the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

As she began to pursue journalism, Berzon made an effort to experience new places. She explained that she was "trying to get as foreign as possible without going to a new country." As part of this mission, she worked for The Anchorage Daily News, The San Antonio Express-News and Red Herring Magazine. She noted that it was "inspiring as a journalist to write about things that are the farthest away from my experiences."

While she never learned many of the technical journalism techniques necessary for a career in journalism during her time at Vassar, Berzon did state that her experience as a reporter for The Miscellany News helped her transition to a professional paper.

After finishing graduate school, Berzon went to work for the Las Vegas Sun. At the suggestion of the paper, Berzon began investigating construction worker deaths as soon as she was hired.

The day the Pulitzer Prize was announced, Berzon was at a local courthouse covering the case of a deceased construction worker. Busy with reporting and frustrated with a delayed hearing, Berzon hadn't checked the messages on her cell phone and missed the call that would have relayed the news. When she returned to the office, still unaware of her award, Berzon received a standing ovation from her colleagues. "The first thing I did was went back to my desk and called my parents," Berzon laughingly recalled, "I was crying."

Berzon felt that the Pulitzer Prize helped the Las Vegas Sun greatly. Las Vegas residents were overall excited and "proud to have the Pulitzer in their city," which, she pointed out, was the first time that it had been awarded to someone in Las Vegas. She explained that the award demonstrated that "there was good investigative journalism going on in the city."

Sociology Professor and Director of the Urban Studies Program Leonard Nevarez commented that "this level of coverage of local news is…uncommon." He went on that the Sun does "what newspapers should do: really shift the conversation." Although the series sparked many heated debates, Berzon feels that by the end, most people ended up respecting her work, and she didn't burn many bridges after all. She is now covering Las Vegas for the Los Angeles bureau of The Wall Street Journal.

When asked about her opinion on modern journalism, Berzon commented that the increasing decline in small, local newspapers is a problem because "local papers can do things that a national paper can't…[they're] on the ground, they know the area." She did not discourage aspiring journalists from entering this field, but instead advised them to learn about other aspects of journalism, such as the video and radio components. After all, Berzon joked, "it's a great thing to be able to say ‘feed me knowledge—and please do it really fast!'"