Nine WWU Alumni Work on Seattle Times' Pulitzer-Winning Coverage of Oso Landslide

Nine alumni from Western Washington University’s department of Journalism contributed to the Seattle Times team that won a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for their breaking news coverage on the 2014 Oso landslide.

Western Alumni Gina Cole ('12); Paige Collins ('12); Colin Ditz ('12); Katie Greene Cotterill ('10); Coral Garnick ('09); Heather Trimm ('03); Laura Gordon ('89); Mark Higgins ('82); and Jack Broom ('74), are Seattle Times staff members that reported on the landslide.

The Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting is awarded to one news organization each year for their excellence in covering breaking news, and the winning publication was announced April 20. The Seattle Times staff won for their reporting on the landslide that killed 43 people, and their follow-up reporting that explored whether or not the landslide could have been avoided. The team spent months reporting and investigating on-site and their coverage included photos, videos, stories and graphics.

Cole, a staff reporter for the Times, was the editor-in-chief of Western’s student newspaper, The Western Front, just four years ago. She had only been working for the Seattle Times for two months when the landslide occurred, and credits Western’s Journalism department for preparing her to handle the workload that came along with covering the disaster.

“The Journalism department was so, so good to me,” Cole said. “The professors believe in your capacity to take what they’re teaching you and run with it. That combination of encouragement and responsibility really shaped me.”

Associate Professor of Journalism Carolyn Nielsen taught five of the nine winners when they attended Western.

“I can say I’m not surprised to see them reach this pinnacle of success,” she said. “The speed with which they have found themselves garnering journalism’s top prize, some of them after less than three years in the field, is phenomenal.”

"My former students have told me how invested they were in this coverage. I know it was important for them to bear witness to the disaster, particularly to the 43 lives lost, and to produce coverage that would reflect the magnitude of what happened. In times of crisis, people often turn to journalists to help them make sense -- as much as is possible in a case like this -- of what happened, and to learn more about the people affected," she said. "These are not easy stories for journalists to cover, but they are such important stories to tell."

Cole, along with 12 other people from the newsroom, will fly to New York City to accept the Pulitzer on behalf of the Seattle Times on May 28.

For more information contact Jennifer Keller, chair of Western’s Journalism department, at (360) 650-4987 or Jennifer.Keller@wwu.edu.