NEW PALTZ — Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer Bernard Stein will visit SUNY New Paltz on Thursday, October 19 to talk with journalism students about the importance of community press.
Stein has been visiting various journalism programs in New York state as the first Center for Community Journalism Journalist in Residence. The CCJ is a non-profit, New York-based organization that supports and aids the state’s smaller newspapers.
The community press is “relevant to our democracy,” Stein said, explaining that people who are not involved in following government in their own back yard are unlikely to participate at other levels.
Stein said that while visiting various journalism classes at New Paltz he will talk about the difference between small and large papers and how the role of the former can be more important. He said people are hungry for community news that directly applies to them.
A publisher, editor and writer, Stein won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for a series of “gracefully-written editorials on politics and other issues affecting New York City residents,” according to the Pulitzer Board. Stein’s editorials appeared in the Riverdale Press, a weekly Bronx newspaper he has been editing since 1978 when he succeeded his father. Under the leadership of Stein and his brother and co-publisher, Richard, the newspaper has won more than 300 awards for the excellence of its news coverage and writing, and has been named best weekly newspaper in New York state eight times.
However, the Riverdale Press has also been known to anger some people. In 1989, after printing an editorial defending the right to read the Salman Rushdie novel, The Satanic Verses, the newspaper’s office was destroyed by firebombs. The Society of Professional Journalists subsequently honored the Stein brothers with its First Amendment Award.
Stein graduated from New York City public schools and the Bronx High School of Science. He earned a bachelor’s degree in literature at Columbia University, and continued his studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was active in civil rights and anti-war movements.
“I got my start raising hell,” he said.
Stein, 59, lives in Riverdale with his wife, Marguerite Adams. They have a daughter who lives in Manhattan.
Stein’s award-winning editorials can be read online at http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1998/editorial-writing/works/.
