Current Snedden Lecturer - David Offer

David Offer retired at the end of 2006 as editor of two daily newspapers in central Maine, ending a 42 year career as an editor and reporter. Before moving to Maine he was the executive editor of the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, but resigned after four months on the job to protest censorship of the newspaper. He was presented the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism by the University of Oregon for that action.

Ealier he was editor of the Newport, Rhode Island Daily News and was a reporter and editor in Wisconsin, Connecticut and Washington state.

Offer served on the board of directors of the Associated Press Managing Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists and is past president of the New England Associated Press Editors Association. He served four times as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize.

His wife, Susan, is a retired registered nurse.

Photo Credit: Joshua Cooper

Previous Snedden Lecturers

Robert Meyerowitz (Fall 2008 - Spring 2009)

Robert Meyerowitz has been a journalist for 20 years. He began his career as a reporter for a weekly paper and a public radio station in Rochester, New York. From there he went to work for Associated Press Radio and, ultimately, for National Public Radio, reporting on wars and elections in Nicaragua, where he was based, as well as from Cuba, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, and Israel. In 1994 he went to work as a reporter at the Anchorage Daily News. He subsequently became the editor of the Anchorage Press, where he worked for seven years. He also served time briefly as the editor of the Honolulu Weekly. In 2007-2008, he was the editor of the weekly New Times Broward-Palm Beach. He's been a freelancer and stringer for numerous newspapers, magazines and networks, including The New York Times and the Canadian Broadcast Corp.

Joel Sartore  (Spring 2008)

National Geographic Photographer. Besides National Geographic, Sartore has completed assignments for Time, Life, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and several numerous book projects. He has recieved several awards including an Award of Excellence in the catagory of Magazine Photographer of the year during the 1992 POY Competition.

Mark Schleifstein  (Spring 2008)

Environment reporter Mark Schleifstein worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune for more than 20 years and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Katrina disaster. Mark has also written a book on the disaster: Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms.




Joel Shurkin (Fall 2007-Spring 2008)

Joel is a journalist, science writer and historian. He and his colleagues at the Philadelphia Inquirer received the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for their coverage of Three-Mile Island. He is the author of multiple books and is a science writer emeritus at Stanford University.

 

David Handschuh  (Spring 2007)  

The New York Daily News – Staff Photographer.  NY Univeristy Professor of Photojournalism.  Handschuh suffered serious injuries and narrowly escaped with his life while covering the attach on the World Trade Center.  During months of recovery, he helped to develop several programs to document and address long term physical and mental health issues for journalists that may arise from working at Ground Zero and other stressful assignments.

Peggy Simpson (Fall 2006) 

Peggy Simpson was the AP reporter covering John Kennedy’s assassination and is a former Contributing Editor for Ms. Magazine and Women’s e-news.  She is an award-winning Washington political and economic correspondent who helped chronicle the women’s political movement.

 

Gary Cohn (Fall 2006)
Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Cohn is a reporter with the Los Angeles Times.  Many of Cohn’s stories have exposed wrongdoing, raised important public policy issues and resulted in significant reforms.  He won the 1998 investigative reporting Pulitzer for a series of articles in the Baltimore Sun that documented the dangers to workers and the environment when old warships are dismantled.

Frank Bass (Fall 2006)

Frank bass shared the 1988 Pulitzer for general news reporting for an investigation into the high infant mortality rate in Alabama.  He is now assigned to a Washington-based national investigations team specializing in multimedia stories, and is the author of ‘The Associated Press Guide to Internet Research and Reporting.’

Hal Foster and Tatyana Goryachova
(Spring 2006)
Hal Foster was a reporter/editor for several newspapers including including the LA Times, Seatlle PI, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He Also wrote Tatyana's story - an Editor of the weekly newspaper Berdyansk Delovoy in Ukraine.  Tatyana wrote about government corruption in her hometown in Ukraine.  She paid for it by having acid thrown in her face.    

Richard Murphy (Fall 2005) 

Photo Editor, Anchorage Daily News.  His professional honors include being part of the Daily News’s 1989 Pulitzer Prize-winning team, and three-time winner of the Picture of the year, Best Use award.  Murphy’s photography is represented in a variety of personal and museum collections, including at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.  

Maurice Possley  (Fall 2005) Maurice Possley has covered local and national aspects of the legal system, including the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the case against Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.  Possley was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and 2001 for work with other Tribune reporters on prosecutorial misconduct and the death penalty.  Their reporting was cited by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan as playing a significant role in his decision to empty Death Row in 2003 by commuting all death sentences in Illinois.

Tom French (Spring 2005)  Tom French earned his Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for the series “Angels & Demons”, about the murder of three women visiting florida.  He started his career as a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times and began development of several projects that grew into books.  The first was a newspaper series titled “A Cry in the Night,” an account of a dramatic murder investigation and trial that French turned into a book called “Unanswered Cries.”  A year reporting in a public high school produced the series and book “South of Heaven.”

Julie Sullivan (Spring 2005)

Julie Sullivan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Oregonian in Portland, Ore., who started her career at The Frontiersman in Wasilla.  She shared the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with three colleagues at The Oregonian who exposed flaws in the immigration and Naturalization Service.


Eric Nalder  (Spring 2005)

Eric Nalder has won two Pulitzer Prizes.  The first for his coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and his second for an investigative report about a federal Indian housing program.  A reporter for 34 years, he has received numerous state, regional and national journalism awards and has taught interviewing and investigative reporting workshops in five countries.  Nalder now works for the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

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