The Diederich College of Communication has announced Jeffery Gerritt as the next director of the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism.
Gerritt, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has more than 30 years’ experience as an investigative reporter, editor, columnist, editorial writer and editorial-page editor at the Detroit Free Press, USA Today, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Toledo Blade and the Green Bay Press-Gazette. As a regional editor for CNHI, Gerritt also directed news operations at The Herald and New Castle News in Western Pennsylvania and the Palestine Herald-Press in East Texas.
He has reported from Tanzania, Brazil and Cuba, as well as from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza as a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. In 2022, Gerritt spent six weeks in Ukraine, covering the refugee crisis as the editorial-page editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Much of Gerritt’s work has focused on prison, criminal justice and urban issues, including mass incarceration, poverty, drugs, addiction and homelessness. His 2020 Pulitzer Prize, earned while working at CNHI’s Palestine Herald-Press, honored a series of investigative editorials exposing the needless, often horrific, deaths of prisoners in Texas county jails.
Gerritt has won more than 80 other national and state journalism awards, including four National Headliner Awards, four medallions from the national Society of Professional Journalists, two Scripps Howard Awards, a Burl Osborne Editorial and Opinion Award from the News Leaders Association, a Carmage Walls Prize for Commentary, and a Batten Medal.
A former jazz and rock drummer, Gerritt earned a B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin in philosophy and music and a master’s degree in journalism from Marquette, where he also worked as a night security guard at O’Donnell Hall.
About the O’Brien Fellowship
The Perry and Alicia O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette began with Peter and Patricia Frechette’s commitment to uphold the future of in-depth reporting and honor Patricia’s parents, Marquette alumni Perry and Alicia O’Brien. In 2013, the Frechettes funded this fellowship and worked with Marquette’s Diederich College of Communication and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to construct it.
