The 2005 Pulitzer Prize Winner in International Reporting
For a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs, including United Nations correspondence, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
Dele Olojede of Newsday, Long Island, NY
For his fresh, haunting look at Rwanda a decade after rape and genocidal slaughter had ravaged the Tutsi tribe.
Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger presents Dele Olojede with a 2005 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting.
Biography
Dele Olojede, Newsday’s Africa Correspondent, joined the newspaper June 6, 1988 as a summer intern. He later became a special writer covering minority affairs when, on loan to the foreign desk in 1992, he made his first of several trips to South Africa. His coverage drew high praise and prizes. Promoted to Newsday’s United Nations Bureau Chief, he covered a range of international stories before his posting in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Prior to Newsday, Olojede was a reporter at the National Concord Newspaper in Lagos, Nigeria from 1982-84, and a founding staff writer and assistant editor at Newswatch, a Lagos weekly news-magazine, between 1984 and 1987. A 1986 award-winning investigative report by Olojede resulted in the freeing of the internationally known Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti, and the dismissal of the federal judge who had sentenced him to prison on trumped up charges.
After winning a $26,000 Ford Foundation Scholars grant, Olojede left Nigeria in 1987 to earn his Masters Degree at Columbia University, where he won the Henry N. Taylor Award as the outstanding foreign student.
Olojede’s other awards include the 1995 Publisher’s Award from Newsday; the 1995 Educational Press of America Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Educational Journalism; the 1992 Unity Award from Lincoln University; the 1992 Clarion Award from Women in Communications; the Media Award the same year from the Press Club of Long Island; and several awards from the New York Association of Black Journalists.
Olojede was born in Nigeria in 1961, the 12th of 29 children. He lives with his wife. Amma, also a journalist and their two children in Johannesburg.
Olojede left Newsday in December 2004.
Dele Olojede was also a Pulitzer Prize Juror for the following:
2002 – International Reporting
Finalists
Nominated as a finalist in International Reporting in 2005:
Borzou Daragahi of The Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ
For his vivid, deeply reported stories on the impact of the Iraq war on citizens and soldiers alike.
The Jury
Simon K.C. Li (chair) assistant managing editor, Los Angeles Times
Josh Friedman; director of international programs Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
Murray Fromson; professor, Annenberg School of Journalism, University of Southern California
Debbie Seward; international editor, Associated Press
Seymour Topping; former administrator, The Pulitzer Prizes, Columbia University
Source: The Pulitzer Prizes Official Website -https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/dele-olojede
