Nikki Kahn took photos of the tragedy during Hurricane Katrina and of the civil strife in Egypt.

But The Washington Post photojournalist, one of two Syracuse University alumni who won Pulitzer Prizes for journalism on April 18, said nothing has come close to the devastation she witnessed in the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

‘The magnitude of the destruction was incredibly hard to capture in a single photograph,’ Kahn said in an email. ‘To witness the sweeping sea of crumbled homes and lives crushed beneath the piles of concrete was vast, and it felt like we’d discover a totally new neighborhood everyday we went out.’

A 2004 alumnus of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications photography graduate program, Kahn was part of a team of three photographers who captured images of the damage caused by the Haitian earthquake. The team won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography.

The second SU alumnus who won a Pulitzer was Paloma Esquivel, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and 2006 alumnus of the magazine, newspaper and online journalism graduate program. She was part of a team, led by Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives, that exposed financial corruption in the small city of Bell, Calif., producing a series of stories that earned them the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

The photography team Kahn was part of also included Ricky Carioti and Carol Guzy. Guzy won her fourth Pulitzer Prize this year and won her first 25 years ago with Kahn’s husband, Michel duCille.

Kahn said her learning experiences at SU — particularly learning the importance of picking a spot and waiting for moments to happen — influenced her photography.

‘There is a sense of community at SU that is still a huge part of my life,’ she said.

Doug Wonders, director of the Newhouse photography labs and an adjunct professor, said Kahn attended the graduate school a couple of years after he did. He became similar to an adviser to her and still keeps in touch with her.

Kahn emailed him a few months ago to see if he had a headshot of her that she could submit with the Pulitzer application. Kahn told Wonders she didn’t think she had a chance to win the Pulitzer, but was entering with her team anyway.

‘She’s a very determined, headstrong person, a lot of ideals, and that’s what makes her a good journalist,’ Wonders said.

For Esquivel, her investigative reporting skills didn’t start when she began work at the Los Angeles Times, but in the NEW 617: ‘Advanced Reporting and Writing’ class she took as a graduate student in Newhouse.

At SU, Esquivel said she traveled into downtown Syracuse in the early morning hours to interview day laborers about their working conditions. The lessons she learned about interviewing and looking for stories paid dividends during her work at the Los Angeles Times, especially when working on the Bell corruption series, she said. While at SU, she also learned the importance of listening to everyday people’s stories, not just those at the top, she said.

‘I think that clearly played out in the stories I did on Bell because a lot of it was just knocking on doors of residents,’ Esquivel said.

Esquivel said she felt the best story for herself in the Bell series was one that exposed the unfair impounding of cars and arbitrary fines imposed by the city. It showed how the corruption going on in Bell affected its residents, she said.

One of Esquivel’s professors at SU, Walt Wasilewski, said he remembers the incredible work ethic Esquivel had while in his advanced reporting class. He touched upon the story she did on day laborers and said he always felt she would be one of those students who would graduate and ‘set the world on fire.’

‘Her reporting, she went places and did things that I just found astounding,’ said Wasilewski, an adjunct professor in Newhouse.

Esquivel also wrote six stories for The Daily Orange during her time at SU.

Wasilewski said seeing one of his former students’ success culminating in a Pulitzer makes him proud and confirms what he tries to teach.

Said Wasilewski: ‘To see someone like Paloma succeed like that gives me a terrific example to say, ‘Look, I’m not exaggerating. This can really help you if you form the right attitudes, form the right work ethics.”

mcooperj@syr.edu

 

Published on April 25, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Mark: mcooperj@syr.edu | @mark_cooperjr