J&PR alumni share in Pulitzer Prize win
Posted on December 1, 2017 at 12:00 PM
The Ghost Ship, an artist’s collective in Oakland, caught fire Dec. 2, 2016, during an underground house music rave. Attendees were trapped and 36 people were killed in the most lethal building fire in Oakland history.
Three Chico State alumni were on the breaking news staff at the East Bay Times and covered the breaking story around the clock and through various angles. J&PR graduates Rick Hurd (News-ed, 1992), Malaika (Fisher) Fraley (News-ed, 1999) and Katrina Cameron (News and PR, 2014) were on the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the devastating event. They are also all former Orionites.
Cameron, a breaking news night reporter who had worked for the East Bay Times for two years, attended the first vigil the night after the fire. She said it was one of the most chilling experiences of her life.
“It was so raw,” she said. “Everyone there didn’t know where their friends were still, they didn’t know what was next. A lot of people were still wearing the clothes they had worn at the rave the night before.”
Cameron is a raver and had friends who had gone to the Ghost Ship, but had never gone herself. When she lived in San Diego, she would attend underground parties in warehouses similar to the Ghost Ship, but said she never once thought an event like this could happen. It was one of the most difficult stories for her to write because it was such a close topic to her.
“When I woke up that morning my dad thought I was there,” she said. “He said, ‘If you were younger, you would have been at that show.’ I haven’t gone to a rave in years, but when I was 18, 19 like a lot of the people who died in that fire, I would’ve been there.”
Cameron cut her teeth covering tragedies while on The Orion. During her time on staff, she covered the death of a Chico visitor who went missing during the Labor Day float.
She also covered the death of Chico State nursing student Kristina Chesterman, who was riding her bike home from campus when she was struck by a drunken driver.
Those were her first experiences covering tragedy and breaking news, Cameron said. Later on in her career, she covered vigil after vigil and tragedy after tragedy, but took what she learned from The Orion and applied it to each story.
“Through my experience at The Orion, I learned that not only does good journalism come from asking the right questions, but it really comes from being a really compassionate person.”
Hurd, Fraley and Cameron are featured in the fall edition of Chico State Today: Path to a Pulitzer. The story is written, fittingly enough, by former Orionite Ashley Gebb (News, 2008) who is publications editor for Chico State Public Affairs and Publications.
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By Bianca Quilantan