Clifford J. Levy speaks at Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska, as part of the Pulitzer Campfires Initiative.
In April, the Alaska Humanities Forum brought New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer winner Clifford J. Levy to the last frontier for three Pulitzer Campfire events.
On the campus of the University of Alaska Anchorage, Levy and fellow Pulitzer-winner and Russia correspondent Kim Murphy drew a full house for their panel discussion, "Storybuilding in the Digital Newsroom." The talk was moderated Alaska Dispatch News Editor David Hulen and was part of the 2016 Alaska Press Club Conference, which gathered more than 250 print, radio, broadcast, and online media reporters and editors from more than 30 communities throughout Alaska.
The second campfire also was part of the Press Club Conference, a keynote address titled, "Finding Your Digital Voice."
According to the Alaska Humanities Forum, "Levy encouraged a lively discussion after his presentation, which was audience-driven via a Q&A session. He spent an hour answering every question from the audience until there were none left."
For the third and final event, Levy traveled even farther north to Palmer, Alaska, a community of 5,300 residents in the Matanuska Valley. At Fireside Books, he spoke of his time as the Times Moscow bureau chief and the 2011 Pulitzer in International Reporting he shared with Ellen Barry. The pair was recognized by the Pulitzer board at the time for their, "dogged reporting that put a human face on the faltering justice system in Russia, remarkably influencing the discussion inside the country."
The Humanities Forum reported that Levy, "discussed his perception of the current status of human rights and freedom of speech in Russia as compared to a decade ago. His talk was punctuated with personal accounts of how this experience affected him and his family, who traveled with him."
Radio Free Palmer broadcast the talk, and a recording is available on its website.