Alumnus Bogdanich wins Pulitzer Prize

Walt Bogdanich, a reporter and editor for The New York Times and a 1975 political science graduate from UW–Madison, has won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

Bogdanich was honored by Pulitzer judges for his heavily documented series “Death on the Tracks,” which revealed the corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings.

“We get always get great pleasure from seeing the successes of our alums, but winning a Pulitzer Prize is an outstanding and exceptional achievement that truly delights us,” says Graham Wilson, chair of the Department of Political Science.

While he was in Madison, Bogdanich also took classes in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

This was Bogdanich’s second Pulitzer Prize. He won in 1988 for his articles in The Wall Street Journal on substandard medical laboratories.

It took Bogdanich 15 months and hundreds of interviews to complete the railroad investigation, and he said that the major challenge was trying to obtain the supporting documents for every serious allegation raised in the stories.

Bogdanich became assistant editor for the newspaper’s Investigative Desk in 2003, after serving as investigation editor for the Business and Finance Desk of the New York Times sine 2001.

Before he joined The Times, he was an investigative producer for CBS’s “60 Minutes,” and before that worked for ABC News. He also worked for the The Cleveland Press and Plain Dealer, and The Wall Street Journal.

After graduating from UW–Madison, he went on to earn a master’s degree in journalism at Ohio State University.