ON WINNING THE PULITZER PRIZE

By Fred Anklam T he light blinked on the phone in front of me on the press row of the Mississippi Senate on the evening of Dec. 20, 1982. “They did it – 96 to 25,” the voice of The Clarion-Ledger reporter Cliff Treyens said matter-of-factly into my ear. I looked up over my right shoulder, catching the eye of Lt. Gov. Brad Dye. He nodded at me, acknowledging that he was getting the same news on his phone: the Mississippi House had passed Gov. William Winter’s landmark education reform act.

Immediately the word was whispered among senators on the floor in front of me and created a buzz in the gallery as those who’d been watching the House action began to filter in and spread the news. “Vote, vote,” urged a few senators in an undertone. What had seemed impossible two weeks earlier was about to become reality: a Mississippi law establishing state-financed kindergartens, financing special reading aides, requiring compulsory school attendance and raising teacher salaries.

More than a year earlier Nancy Weaver (now Teichert) and I had been handed an assignment stunning in its simplicity and powerful in its significance: find out what’s wrong with public education in Mississippi and what needs to be done to fix it.

The Clarion-Ledger under Rea Hederman in the mid-1970s had morphed into a tough, probing newspaper whose reporters roamed the state looking for stories that had never been addressed in the newspaper’s earlier years. To Weaver and me, the charge from our editors was not unusual. All reporters on staff were expected to think big. Yet the scope of our challenge was monumental.

I had covered education for two years. Weaver was a veteran investigative reporter who had earned national acclaim for her reporting. We found that we made a good team.

I introduced her to key players in education and took her to see crumbling public school buildings, private schools that sucked support and resources from public ones, the impact in textbooks

and resources of low state financing levels which local authorities could supplement – or not. Indeed, one school superintendent’s sole job was to make sure the children in his county were taken by bus to the neighboring county to attend public school.

Weaver spearheaded the project, organizing our reporting around key topics as we traveled across the state. She was skilled at bringing a human element to the dry topics the series addressed. I marveled as she found a 1960s Life magazine article about a public school superintendent who left his job during desegregation to start a private academy. She tracked him down, still teaching at that academy. He was one of our first interviews.

We were not working in a vacuum. Since taking office in 1980, Winter had pushed for education reform, symbolized by his bid for state-financed kindergartens. He understood that without a state mandate and the financing behind it, kindergartens would only be a local option, not available to all. Winter saw improving education as the key step in bringing home better jobs and a better life for Mississippians.

Winter was pushing hard for reforms, but what was seen as his best chance ended in spring 1982. In a tumultuous House session on a calendar day – when bills had to be voted on and sent to the Senate or they died – House Speaker C.B. “Buddie” Newman gaveled the chamber out of session while kindergarten supporters shouted in vain to be recognized so that a kindergarten bill could be voted on.

At the newspaper, Weaver and I questioned what would come of our investigative work when the Hederman family sold The Clarion-Ledger to the Gannett Co., a chain gearing up to launch a national newspaper, USA Today. On June 1, 1982, Gannett named Charles Overby editor of The Clarion-Ledger.

Overby was an education advocate and excited about our series. He talked regularly with Winter’s staff about the governor’s plans. When Winter decided he’d call a special session on education, Overby told us he was holding our series till just before that session for maximum impact. He assigned City Editor Lee Cearnal to do one last edit of the series.

In early December, the newspaper published our work, several stories each day, in the week before the special session began. What surprised readers, and reporters as well, was that every day there was an editorial on whatever topic was in the news columns. It was a coordinated effort overseen by Overby, and included op-ed pieces, some opposing the reform effort. In the past, editorials always had lagged behind the reporting by days.

As the session opened, Treyens and I found Overby asking about the smallest details: Who voted which way in the subcommittee? What was the next step for the bill? What were opponents likely to do? He wanted all the answers in our stories.

So as we reported about subcommittees and committees, we named how each member voted, to the astonishment of the legislators. Repeatedly, the paper’s editorial page urged readers to contact their legislators about their votes. When the House passed a bill that first week, the newspaper published a Hall of Shame, listing on the editorial page the names of those who voted no. Names of senators were added when that bill was voted on the next week.

Treyens and I both found legislators buttonholing us to ask why they were being singled out and complaining about the unfairness of the coverage. As a conference committee worked out details of the final bill behind closed doors, one senator gave a floor speech complaining about the newspaper’s coverage and urging members of the press corps to have a “heart-to-heart” talk with The Clarion-Ledger reporters about our coverage.

But now the final bill was before the Senate. As I began marking the vote tally with a pencil, I realized that votes were changing and opponents were now in support. Tears blurred my vision as I realized the governor’s reform effort was becoming law and that our work at the newspaper had helped make that happen. (Among the journalism awards to The Clarion-Ledger for its coverage of Gov. Winter’s education reform effort were the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Public Service, the 1983 Roy W. Howard Public Service Award and the 1983 Education Writers Association’s Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting.)

FRED ANKLAM 2014 SILVER EM RECIPIENT By Meggie Carter

On April 8, 2015, Fred Anklam Jr. was awarded the 2014 schools was crucial in the efforts to bring about educational Samuel Talbert Silver Em Award from the University of Misreform in the state. sissippi’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media. “The neat thing was to see the newspaper influence for

The Silver Em award was started in 1958 and is Ole Miss’ the better and to see it happen with work you are doing. It is highest award in journalism. In order to be eligible, recipients moving and validating,” Anklam said. must be Mississippians who are journalists or journalists After 29 years at USA Today, Anklam accepted an early with careers in Mississippi. retirement offer in May 2015.

“For my alma mater to say I have done a good job is very Based on his experience in journalism, Anklam suggests meaningful to me,” Anklam said. “To be included in this select that young journalists: Take responsibility seriously. Be group is an honor. I cannot say enough about what it means.” focused and disciplined in doing stories. And be adaptable

Anklam, who recently was the senior night editor for because journalism is changing dramatically. USA Today, won the Pulitzer Prize when he worked for The The author is a senior, integrated marketing communications Clarion-Ledger. That newspaper’s reporting on Mississippi major from Old Lyme, Connecticut.