A Pulitzer Prize winning member of the Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and a student who was at the founding of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism have joined the Iowa Center’s board of directors.
The terms of Jane Fritsch and Jim Malewitz are effective immediately.
Jane Fritsch, an assistant professor of journalism and communication at the Greenlee school has worked for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune. As a New York Times reporter, she covered the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and contributed to “A Nation Challenged,” the Times coverage awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She and a New York Times colleague were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting.
At the Los Angeles Times, she was the chief City Hall reporter and did investigative projects. Over the years, she has written about a broad range of subjects, including science, the arts, banking, children’s books and crime. At the Chicago Tribune, she was the chief reporter for the trial of the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Most recently, she was Web News Editor and a senior digital editor at the Chicago Tribune. She also spent a year as the Assistant Bureau Chief for the Associated Press in Chicago.
As an adjunct instructor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she taught local enterprise reporting. The length of her term on the board is to be determined.
Jim Malewitz, whose first story for IowaWatch was instrumental in building the nonprofit, nonpartisan news service’s reputation as a trusted investigative news source is an energy reporter at The Texas Tribune, one of the most successful among the growing number of nonprofit news organizations growing in the United States.
He is a founding IowaWatch staff member and former assistant editor who graduated from the University of Iowa with a master of arts-professional in journalism degree in May 2011.
His May 29, 2010, investigation “When Students Go Missing”, was IowaWatch’s first published story. The story told of the death of Jacques Similhomme, a University of Iowa graduate student who disappeared in September 2009. Similhomme’s father could not get adequate help from officials at the UI and in law enforcement or in local and regional media to mount a search for Similhomme, whose body was found in Cedar Rapids a month after his disappearance. An associate state medical examiner said he drowned while Cedar Rapids police said he committed suicide, a ruling Similhomme’s father disputed.
Malewitz earned his undergraduate degree from Grinnell College in 2009, where he majored in political science with a concentration in global development studies. Before joining The Texas Tribune he covered energy and environmental issues at Stateline, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service in Washington, D.C.
His term as director ends in 2016.
The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that does investigative and public affairs journalism; makes that journalism available free on its website, IowaWatch.org, and through media partners; and trains college students to do this journalism at an ethical, high level.
