Roy J. Harris Jr.

Roy J. Harris Jr. has been a journalist for some of the nation's most respected news organizations for four decades. From 1971 to 1994 he served as a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, including six years as deputy chief of its 14-member Los Angeles bureau. His next 13 years were as senior editor of The Economist Group's Boston-based CFO Magazine and CFO.com.

The latest edition of the critically acclaimed Pulitzer's Gold, revised for the 2016 centennial of the Pulitzer Prizes, is from Columbia University Press. Research for his work began in 2002, when he returned to St. Louis to make a presentation, on the hundredth anniversary of his father's birth, about the five Public Service Pulitzers won by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Says Bob Woodward: "Roy Harris is the master historian of the Pulitzer Prize. He has written the real inside story of the most serious journalism of the last century, and as a result provided a brilliant portrait of America. Know your journalism, and you will know your country and its values."

Harris currently works from his home in Hingham, Mass. He is a commentator on press public service and the Pulitzer Prizes, and regularly contributes to the website of the St. Petersburg, Florida-based Poynter Institute. He has taught journalism at Emerson College in Boston, and loves discussing Pulitzer-winning journalism with college classes around the country.

While with CFO Magazine, from 2006 to 2007 Harris was national president of the 800-member American Society of Business Publication Editors. He currently serves as ASBPE Foundation president, and is a founding member of the ASBPE ethics committee.

The son of a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Post-Dispatch, Harris began his career as a copyboy and later a reporter for the Post-Dispatch. While attending Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism he was managing editor of the Daily Northwestern. In 1968 he reported for the Los Angeles Times, where one assignment was helping cover the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

After three years at the Wall Street Journal in Pittsburgh he moved to the West Coast, taking over the Journal's aerospace beat and writing about airlines, entertainment and sports--including the 1984 Summer Olympics. As deputy bureau chief he helped coordinate coverage of such stories as the 1992 race rioting that followed the police beating of Rodney King, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

IN THE VIDEO ATTACHED TO THIS SITE Harris discusses the courage of journalists covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005.