Rick Bragg

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Rick Bragg

Born July 26, 1959 (1959-07-26) (age 48)
Piedmont, Alabama, United States
Occupation Author
Journalist

Rick Bragg (born July 26, 1959 in Piedmont, Alabama) won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1996 for his work at The New York Times. He resigned from the Times in 2003 after an investigation found he was plagiarizing the work of others [1]. Bragg credits his writing ability to the oral storytelling of family and friends in his childhood in the Appalachian foothills of Alabama. He has written three memoirs.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Bragg worked at several newspapers before joining the New York Times in 1994. He covered murders and unrest in Haiti as a metro reporter, then wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial and more as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. He later became the paper's Miami bureau chief just in time for Elian Gonzalez's arrival and the international controversy surrounding the little Cuban boy.

On May 29, 2003, after serving a two-week suspension during an investigation that found Bragg passed off the research of stringers and interns as his own [1], Bragg resigned from the Times[2]. The story which sparked the investigation was a story Bragg wrote about Florida Gulf Coast oystermen. He wrote a narrative first person story of how he experienced oystermen culture:

“ Bobby Varnes prods the sandy bottom with a worn wooden pole, rhythmically stabbing at the soft sand as the boat idles along, waiting for the pole to strike a hard, brittle shell." White egrets "slip like paper airplanes just overhead" and mullet "belly-flop with a sharp clap into steel-gray water." ”
 
— Rick Bragg

Yet Bragg only spent one day in Apalachicola and totally relied on the research and interviews of other reporters which he passed off as his own[3].

He has taught writing in colleges and in newspaper newsrooms and now works as a writing professor at the University of Alabama's journalism program in its College of Communications and Information Sciences.

His latest book, The Prince of Frogtown, explores his father's life in Bragg's hometown of Jacksonville, Alabama.

[edit] Awards

Besides winning a Pulitzer Prize, he has received more than 50 writing awards in 20 years, including the prestigious American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award twice. In 1992, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.

[edit] Works

  • Rick Bragg (March 16, 1999). All Over but the Shoutin. Random House Value Publishing. ISBN 0517361620. 
  • Rick Bragg (November 1, 1999). Wooden Churches: A Celebration. Algonquin Books. ISBN 156512233X. 
  • Rick Bragg (August 28, 2001). Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg. Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition. ISBN 0375725520. 
  • Rick Bragg (August 13, 2002). Ava's Man. Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition. ISBN 0375724443. 
  • Rick Bragg (2003). I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story.. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 1400042577. 
  • Rick Bragg (May 6, 2008). The Prince of Frogtown. Random House. ISBN 978-0-7393-2796-8 (0-7393-2796-8). 

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Howard Kurtz (Thursday, May 29, 2003; Page C01). Rick Bragg Quits At New York Times (HTML). Washington Post. Retrieved on 2007-11-24.
  2. ^ Rose Arce (Thursday, May 29, 2003 Posted: 0433 GMT (12:33 PM HKT)). Times accepts Pulitzer-winning reporter's resignation (HTML). CNN. Retrieved on 2007-11-24.
  3. ^ Jack Shafer (Friday, May 23, 2003, at 5:56 PM ET). Rick Bragg's "Dateline Toe-Touch" (HTML). pub. Retrieved on 2007-11-24.
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