Unearthing stories, rebuilding trust: Pulitzer winners bring tales from front lines

In front of a full San Joaquin Delta College theatre, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Caitlin Dickerson recounted a memory of spreading thousands of government documents across the floor of her Brooklyn apartment.

The reporter had spent years fighting federal agencies for the records, on the trail of a story about the Trump administration’s separation of migrant children from their families.

But making sense of the documents was another task entirely. Dickerson recounted how she created a digital chronology with the records, ultimately forming the backbone of her definitive reporting for The Atlantic on child separation at the border.

Dickerson’s story was one of many told in Stockton on Thursday night as three Pulitzer recipients pulled back the curtain on how journalists work — and stressed why it’s crucial for communities to be involved in the process.

The panel discussion among Dickerson, Anna Wolfe of Mississippi Today and Nicole Carroll, executive director of NEWSWELL, covered the full span of the craft: how journalists pick stories, obtain public records, protect sources and fight lawsuits. It also explored how they rebuild trust, especially in communities where the collapse of traditional local news has left it broken.

“Local is where we can still have conversations,” Carroll said. “Local is where we can still get together and hash through things.”

The conversation was the latest stop in the nationwide project Pulitzer on the Road, which brings journalists honored by the Pulitzers to communities across the country, including Madison, Wisconsin; Jackson, Mississippi; New York and Los Angeles to discuss their journalism.

Started by famed publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the Pulitzer Prizes are awarded yearly for excellent works of journalism, writing and music. 

Dickerson, Wolfe and Carroll won the prize respectively for their coverage of the separation of migrant children from their parents; a sweeping welfare fraud scandal; and of the U.S. border wall. 

Each shared their recollections of the in-depth reporting required, and how it resonated afterward. Wolfe, describing her reporting on how funds were routed away from Mississippi’s poorest families, noted, “This story illustrates a conspiracy to keep people in poverty that continues today.”

The plan to bring the series to Stockton for a public forum – sponsored by Stocktonia, which is a part of the nonprofit NEWSWELL, and by San Joaquin Delta College and its student-run media group Fierce Mustang Media – had been in the works for months. Marjorie Miller, a leading figure in The Associated Press and now administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, moderated the talk.

As the second Trump administration unfolds, bringing with it a blitz of immigration-related executive orders, the discussions of migrant families and the border wall were timely — maybe even more so in San Joaquin County, where about 26% of residents were born outside the U.S. and fear of ICE raids has spiked.

So too was the conversation about disinformation in media, a profound problem nationally and a leading issue locally for many readers in Stockton. 

“There’s a reason that disinformation is so sticky,” Carroll explained. First, it confirms our biases, she said. Second, it’s highly repetitive. And third, “The algorithms are targeting us … social media is actively working to spread disinformation,” Carroll said.

But there’s hope. “The most important thing about countering disinformation is when somebody you trust tells you, ‘That’s not true,’” she said.

Journalists across the country – including in Stockton – are working to rebuild that trust.

“We’ve got to do a better job,” Carroll said. “That’s why we’re sitting here.”`