Joyce Dehli joins the Pulitzer Prize Board

Columbia University Office of Public Affairs

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

Joyce Dehli,
Vice President of Lee Enterprises,
Joins the Pulitzer Prize Board

New York, NY (May 1, 2008) - Columbia University today announced that Joyce Dehli, vice president for news for Lee Enterprises, has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Lee Enterprises publishes 54 daily newspapers and their Web sites. They include the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, and other mid-size and small newspapers.

Dehli, who was appointed vice president for news in 2006, leads strategic efforts to strengthen the company's print and online journalism. She also oversees journalism training, which includes the curriculum of Lee Online University, a companywide program she helped create. From late 2004 to 2006, she served as Lee's editorial training manager and then director of editorial development. She conducted extensive training in enterprise journalism, newsroom leadership and ethical decision-making.

As managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal from 2003 to 2004 and assistant managing editor from 2001 to 2003, she helped to lead the newspaper's emphasis on investigative journalism, which included reports on statehouse corruption, a prosecutor's justice-for-sale scheme, the unraveling of a poor neighborhood within an affluent city, and racial disparities in local schools.

From 1996 to 2001, she served as night city editor, enterprise editor and city editor at the State Journal. She joined the newspaper in 1987 as a beat reporter and later moved into project reporting. She began her journalism career in Louisville, Kentucky, where she reported for The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times from 1981 to 1984.

Dehli, a 2002 Poynter Ethics Fellow, has been a guest teacher and roundtable panelist at The Poynter Institute, delivered a presentation for the National Institute on Computer-Assisted Reporting on mining databases for local stories, and taught journalists about analyzing databases. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Marquette University in Milwaukee and a master's degree in English literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In March of 2008, Dehli served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting.

The Pulitzer Prizes, which are administered at Columbia University, were established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher, who left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. A portion of his bequest was used to found the School of Journalism in 1912 and establish the Pulitzer Prizes, which were first awarded in 1917.

The 19-member board is composed mainly of leading editors or news executives from media outlets across the U.S., as well as four academics. The dean of Columbia's journalism school and the administrator of the prizes are nonvoting members. The chair rotates annually to the most senior member. The board is self-perpetuating in the election of members. Voting members may serve three terms of three years for a total of nine years.