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Lisa Gartner

Medill alumna Lisa Gartner (BSJ10) was one of three Tampa Bay Times reporters honored with the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Using data and powerful narrative accounts, Gartner and her colleagues conducted a yearlong investigation into struggling public elementary schools in Florida’s Pinellas County. They won the highest prize in American journalism “for exposing a local school board's culpability in turning some county schools into failure factories, with tragic consequences for the community,” according to the Pulitzer judges. At Northwestern, Gartner served as editor in chief of North By Northwestern. She currently covers Pinellas County Schools, colleges and universities. Before joining the Tampa Bay Times in 2013, she covered D.C. Public Schools for The Washington Examiner.