J-School Alum M.L. Elrick wins Pulitzer

The J-School is proud to announce our eighth Pulitzer Prizewinner among alumni. M.L. Elrick, a 1990 graduate, won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting along with his reporting partner Jim Schaefer at the Detroit Free Press.

The duo uncovered a text message scandal and perjured testimony by the then Mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick and his Chief of Staff Christine Beatty that cost taxpayers more than $9 million dollars. Their reporting lead to the resignations of Kilpatrick and Beatty and the arrests, convictions and jailing of the two.

The Pulitzer winners were announced Monday afternoon.

Elrick has been a great supporter of the J-School. Last fall, he and Schaefer gave this year's Neal Shine Ethics Lecture. Sunday evening, the duo received the first ever Watchdog Journalism Award presented by the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.

The School of Journalism at MSU has at least seven other Pulitzer Prize winners, including faculty member Eric Freedman, and alumni Richard Cooper '69, 'Andrew Guy '96, Howard James '58, Ariel Melchior Jr. '62, and Jim Mitzelfeld '84. Beth McCoy '03 is a recent double 2006 Pulitzer winner, part of a team of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans that won two Pulitzers for breaking news and public service.