Two USF alumni, Richard Oppel, `64, and Mike Pride, `72, are members of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize Board, the panel that determines the annual winners of the famed prize established by renowned journalist Joseph Pulitzer in 1917.
Richard Oppel earned a degree in Political Science. He was named editor of the Austin American-Statesman in 1995, and is responsible for news and editorial content. After serving in the Marine Corps, he graduated from USF and began his career with The Tampa Tribune.
He worked for The Associated Press and The Detroit Free Press before becoming executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat in 1977, and then editor of The Charlotte Observer in 1978.
During his 15 years in Charlotte, The Observer won two Pulitzers, both gold medals for meritorious public service, and shared a Pulitzer with The Atlanta Constitution for editorial cartoons.
Oppel has been the National Press Foundation's Editor of the Year, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and president of the North Carolina Press Association.
He and his wife Carol have two children, Richard Jr., a New York Times reporter; and Shelby Oppel Wood, a Portland Oregonian reporter. He became a Pulitzer Board member in 2000 and is a 2008 co-chair of the board.
Mike Pride graduated with a degree in American Studies. He has been editor of the Concord Monitor since 1983. Prior to that, he served as its managing editor. Under his editorship the Monitor has won the New England Newspaper of the Year Award 19 times, as well as numerous national awards for excellence. The paper has been cited by Time magazine and the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the best papers in the country.
Before joining the Monitor, Pride was city editor of the Clearwater Sun and the Tallahassee Democrat. He served as a Russian linguist in the Army during the late 1960s and began his journalism career as a sports writer at The Tampa Tribune.
Pride was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1984-85. He won the National Press Foundation's editor of the year award in 1987 for directing the Monitor's coverage of the Challenger disaster and later the Yankee Quill Award for contributions to New England journalism.
In 2004, Pride was Weinstein scholar-in-residence at Gettysburg College, where he co-taught a course in presidential politics. He has also been a lecturer and tour guide at the Civil War Institute at the college. In 2005, he was a Hoover media fellow at Stanford University.
Pride is a former chairman of the Small Newspapers Committee of the American Society of Newspapers Editors and also served on the society's writing awards board.
He is the co-author of My Brave Boys, a Civil War history, and Too Dead to Die, the memoir of a Bataan Death March survivor, and the co-editor of The New Hampshire Century. He became a board member in 1999 and is a past chair of the board.