UNH Journalism Program Celebrates 40 Years

UNH Journalism Program Celebrates 40 Years
Two alums from Washington Post to speak Oct. 3

Contact: Erika Mantz
603-862-1567
UNH Media Relations

Sept. 24, 2003

DURHAM, N.H. – Two alumni of the Journalism Program at the University of New Hampshire will kick off the program’s 40th anniversary celebration Friday, Oct. 3, 2003, at 7:30 p.m. in the Strafford Room at the Memorial Union Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Kevin Sullivan, ’81, Washington Post reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner, and Matthew Vita, ’78, deputy editor for national security at the Washington Post overseeing the Post’s coverage of U.S. diplomatic, military and intelligence policy, will speak about covering the post 9/11 world at home and abroad.

Sullivan and his wife, Mary Jordan, won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for exposing corruption in Mexico’s criminal justice system. He has been co-bureau chief of the Post’s Mexico City Bureau since 2000, covering Mexico, Cuba and Central America. He held the same position in the Post’s Tokyo bureau from 1995 to 1999. Sullivan joined the Post in 1991.

Vita worked for the Associated Press in Vermont and Warsaw, Poland, and opened a London bureau for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and its parent company, Cox Newspapers. He returned to the United States in 1993 as a diplomatic correspondent for Cox in Washington. Since joining the Post in 1997, Vita covered Congress and the 2000 House and Senate campaigns, and has been congressional editor deputy foreign editor.

The reunion will also feature the announcement of the Michael Kelly Memorial Scholarship Fund. Kelly, ’79, was the first American journalist killed in Iraq. Gifts made to the fund will be used to provide scholarship support for students interested in journalism. To donate, call (800) 738-7426 or write UNH Foundation, Inc., 9 Edgewood Road, Durham, NH 03824. Gifts can also be online at www.foundation.unh.edu. All contributions are fully tax deductible as allowed by law.