UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A four-time Pulitzer Prize winner whose career has spanned newspapers, magazines, radio, film production and more will share his experiences with students and the public during a free event and question-and-answer session March 23 as part of the Journalism Speakers Forum, which features weekly speakers during the spring semester at Penn State.
The session featuring Ken Armstrong, titled “Lies My Profession Taught Me,” will begin at 7 p.m. March 23 on Zoom.
Armstrong, a reporter at ProPublica, has earned Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting (2012) and explanatory reporting (2016). He also shared in two staff Pulitzers for breaking news (2015 and 2010).
Before joining ProPublica, Armstrong worked at the Marshall Project, and before that he worked at newspapers in Seattle, Chicago, Virginia, Alaska, New York, California, Idaho and Colorado. Armstrong has done some radio (“This American Life”), some Netflix (as a consultant/producer for “Unbelievable,” a dramatized series based on a story he co-wrote) and some magazine work (The New Yorker). He also has worked on books and served as a visiting professor at Princeton.
At the Chicago Tribune, Armstrong co-wrote a series on the death penalty that helped prompt the Illinois governor to halt executions and later empty death row. In 2009 he received the John Chancellor Award from Columbia University for lifetime achievement, and in 2018 he received an honorary doctorate from Purdue.
The series of special guest presentations was coordinated by Will Yurman, the Norman Eberly Professor of Practice in Journalism in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. Yurman serves as host for the weekly discussions. Videos of previous visitors for the forum are available online.