KU News Release

Leonard Pitts Jr.

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More Information

• William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications

LAWRENCE — Leonard Pitts Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, will receive the William Allen White Foundation’s National Citation during a free and public ceremony at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5, at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

Pitts joined the Miami Herald in 1991 as its pop music critic. Since 1994, he has penned a syndicated column of commentary on pop culture, social issues and family life. His book, “Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood,” was released in May 1999 and reissued in paperback in 2006. In March 2009, he published his first novel, “Before I Forget.”

“Leonard Pitts speaks in the tradition of William Allen White as a voice for his community and his country,” said Ann Brill, dean of the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. “Both were honored with Pulitzer Prizes in recognition of their words and the impact their editorials have had on their readers. The school is proud to honor Mr. Pitts for excellence in journalism."

Pitts has been writing professionally since 1976 when, as an 18-year-old college student, he began doing freelance reviews and profiles for SOUL, a national black entertainment tabloid. Two years later, he was its editor. In the years since then, Pitts’ work has appeared in such publications as Musician, Spin, TV Guide, Reader’s Digest and Parenting. In addition, he wrote, produced and syndicated “Who We Are,” an award-winning 1988 radio documentary on the history of blacks in America, and has written and produced numerous other radio programs on subjects as diverse as Madonna and Martin Luther King Jr. Pitts also was a writer for radio’s popular countdown program, “Casey’s Top 40 with Casey Kasem.”

Pitts won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He also was a finalist in 1992. In 1997, he took first place for commentary in division four (newspapers with a circulation over 300,000) in the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors’ Ninth Annual Writing Awards competition. The Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others, have honored him. He is a five-time recipient of the National Headliners Award.

“Leonard Pitts has strived to bring the news into human perspective,” William Allen White Foundation Chairman Tom Eblen said. “He personifies the art of writing as craft and magic. It is both, and Pitts has awards too numerous to count as evidence of his shared gifts.”

In 2001, Pitts received the American Society of Newspaper Editors prestigious ASNE Award for commentary writing and was named Feature of the Year Columnist by Editor and Publisher magazine. In 2002, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists awarded him its inaugural Columnist of the Year award. Also in 2002, GLAAD Media awarded him the Outstanding Newspaper Columnist award. In 2003 and 2004, he was a visiting professor in journalism at Hampton University in Hampton, Va. In 2005-06 he was a journalism professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.

Twice each week, millions of newspaper readers around the country seek out his rich and uncommonly resonant voice. Nowhere was this demonstrated more forcefully than in the response to his initial column on the Sept. 11 attacks. Pitts’ column, “We’ll Go Forward From This Moment,” an angry and defiant open letter to the terrorists, circulated the globe via the Internet. It generated upwards of 30,000 e-mails and has since been set to music, reprinted in poster form, read on television by Regis Philbin and quoted by Congressman Richard Gephardt as part of the Democratic Party’s weekly radio address.

The William Allen White Foundation trustees chose Pitts to receive the citation, presented annually since 1950. KU’s journalism school is named in White’s honor. White (1868-1944) was a nationally influential Kansas editor and publisher. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 and posthumously in 1947.

Other notable recipients of the William Allen White citation include James Reston, 1950; Walter Cronkite, 1969; Arthur O. Sulzberger, 1974; James J. Kilpatrick, 1979; Helen Thomas, 1986; Charles Kuralt, 1989; Bernard Shaw, 1994; Bob Woodward, 2000; Molly Ivins, 2001; Cokie Roberts, 2002; Gerald F. Seib, 2005; Gordon Parks, 2006; and Seymour Hersh, 2008. A complete listing of past recipients is available online at www.journalism.ku.edu.