Pulitzer Prize Board elects two new Board members

Media Contact:
Sig Gissler, (212) 854-3841 or sg138@columbia.edu
Clare Oh, (212) 854-5479 or clare.oh@columbia.edu

Randell Beck, South Dakota publisher, and Keven Willey, Texas editorial page editor

New York, Dec. 3, 2008 — Randell Beck, president and publisher of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Keven Ann Willey, editorial page editor of The Dallas Morning News, have been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University announced today.

Beck, as the prize-winning executive editor of the Argus Leader from 2001 to 2008, led his newspaper through numerous public service, investigative and First Amendment projects. Those included a legal battle that resulted in a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in 2005 unsealing more than 200 criminal pardons issued secretly by the governor of South Dakota.

Under his direction, the newspaper was also recognized as an industry leader for its recruitment and promotion of journalists of color. Beck chairs a panel of journalists and academics that organizes and hosts the largest training effort of its kind for young Native American journalists.

This year Beck was received the Award for Editorial Leadership from the American Society for Newspaper Editors. Given annually since 2001, the award honors individuals who have “championed great journalism during their careers.”

A graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, he began his career at the now-defunct Memphis Press-Scimitar as a courts and police reporter in 1979. From 1983 to 1987, he worked at the Knoxville (Tenn.) Journal as reporter covering energy and environment issues. He joined the Kansas City Star in 1987 as a general assignment reporter and became an editor two years later. Beck became assistant managing editor at the San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sun in 1996. In 1998, he joined The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., and served as managing editor of that newspaper from 1999 to 2001.

Keven Ann Willey, a native of Washington, D.C., became vice president and editorial page editor of The Dallas Morning News in November 2002. Her editorial department’s successful four-year campaign to amend the state constitution to require legislators to publicly record their votes by name was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing. Willey received the 2007 Mayborn Award for Community Service from the Texas Daily Newspaper Association and the 2007 James Madison Award from the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas for the recorded votes effort. Those editorials also won the 2004 Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment.

Willey attended the University of Arizona and studied briefly in Europe and in Guadalajara, Mexico. She spent the majority of her college career at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, where she graduated magna cum laude in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism with emphasis in political science and Spanish. She is a 2001 graduate of the Management Development Program sponsored by the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She was named a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University.

Willey began her journalism career at The Associated Press in Phoenix, and later in 1980 joined The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. She spent 1987 to 1988 covering the presidential campaign and has covered eight national political conventions. Willey became The Republic’s political columnist in 1989 and was named editorial page editor in 1998. Under her direction The Republic’s editorial pages were twice named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

A 2008 Pulitzer Prize jurist, Willey was the 2006 to 2007 president of the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors, a statewide organization of newspaper editors, and is a former board member of the National Conference of Editorial Writers. She is currently a board member of the SMU Tate Lecture Series and a member of the World Affairs Council of Dallas-Fort Worth.

In years past, Willey won many awards for news writing, column writing and editorial writing, including an award from The Associated Press Managing Editors. She is a former president of the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona and a founding board member of First Amendment Funding Inc. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, and she has been featured on PBS, NPR, CNN, C-SPAN and numerous other television and radio stations nationwide.