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Megan Mulligan, [email protected] or 212-854-3841
New York, NY (Dec. 3, 2020) — Kelly Lytle Hernández, a professor of History, African American Studies and Urban Planning at UCLA, and Kevin Merida, a senior vice president at ESPN and editor-in-chief of The Undefeated, have been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University announced today.
“We are delighted to welcome two leaders in their respective fields to the Pulitzer Prize Board,” said co-chairs Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica, and Aminda Marqués González, vice president and executive editor at Simon & Schuster's adult trade publishing imprint. “Merida has had a distinguished career as a reporter, newsroom leader, and digital innovator who has invented new ways to cover the cultural and economic juggernaut that is American sports. Lytle Hernández is a leading scholar in an emerging field that casts important light on both our past and present: the history and practice of incarceration.”
Lytle Hernández is a professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA where she holds the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History. She is also the director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA.
A leading expert on race, immigration and mass incarceration, she is the author of “Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol” and “City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles” and the director of Million Dollar Hoods, a Big Data research initiative that maps the fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration. For her historical and contemporary work, Lytle Hernández was named a 2019 Catherine T. and John D. MacArthur Fellow.
“I am honored to join the Pulitzer Prize Board. The Pulitzer Prizes celebrate bold and creative storytelling across numerous formats, from journalism to music, history to poetry. The Pulitzer Prizes also lift critical voices into the public square: voices that inform and inspire us while shedding new light on the world in which we live. I am thankful for this opportunity to work with fellow Board members in celebrating a diverse community of journalists, scholars and artists, and look forward to the work ahead,” Lytle Hernández said.
She holds a B.A. from the Department of Ethnic Studies at University of California at San Diego, and a Ph.D. from the Department of History at University of California at Los Angeles.
Merida was hired by ESPN in November 2015 and launched The Undefeated, a multimedia platform that explores the intersections of race, sports and culture, in May 2016. In 2020, The Undefeated’s culture critic Soraya McDonald was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Criticism. During Merida’s tenure at ESPN, he also has overseen the Investigative/News Enterprise unit, the television shows “E:60” and “Outside the Lines,” and chaired ESPN’s Editorial Board.
“I am honored to be elected to the Pulitzer Board. It is essential to inspire greatness in journalism and creative expression, to encourage bravery and inventiveness and reward work that not only makes a difference but allows the world to see us all. I am grateful to be able to contribute to the tradition of excellence that the Pulitzer Prizes represent,” Merida said.
Before joining ESPN, Merida spent 22 years at The Washington Post. He led the national staff for four years during the Obama presidency, and was managing editor overseeing news and features coverage for nearly three years. During his tenure as managing editor, he helped lead the Post to four Pulitzer Prizes. Prior to the Post, from 1983-93, Merida worked at The Dallas Morning News, where in 1990, he was part of a Dallas Morning News team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in explanatory journalism for a special report on the world’s “hidden wars.” Merida began his career at The Milwaukee Journal, where he worked from 1979-83 as a general assignments reporter.
Merida is co-author of “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas” and “Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs.” He is a contributor to and editor of the anthology, “Being A Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril,” based on an award-winning Washington Post series. Merida’s honors include being named “Journalist of the Year” in 2000 by the National Association of Black Journalists, receiving the Missouri Honors Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism in 2018, and this year receiving NABJ’s Chuck Stone Lifetime Achievement Award. Merida is a 1979 graduate of Boston University.
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 journalists or news executives from media outlets across the U.S., as well as five academics or persons in the arts. 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 or members. 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.