BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Pulitzer Prize nominee Dave Kindred, ’63, returned to his alma mater last month to share five decades of journalism experience with Illinois Wesleyan students in the May Term course Editorial Writing and Reviewing.
An English major during his years at IWU, Kindred still recalls his days of sports editing for The Argus and working his way through school at the local newspaper, The Pantagraph. He has since become a legend in the sports journalism world, writing for respected newspapers The Louisville Courier-Journal and The Washington Post. Although Kindred received the 1991 Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement in sports journalism and was elected to the 2006 National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame, he regards his 1998 Illinois Wesleyan’s Distinguished Alumnus Award as one of the highlights of his life.
Kindred lived through the journalism revolution, witnessing the highs and lows throughout the years. “At The Washington Post, I wrote four or five times per week from everywhere in the world on every major sporting event, every time trying to make the column the best one I ever wrote,” said Kindred, a hopeless romantic for print journalism. “That era, the late ’70s to the late ’80s, was the newspaper world’s golden era, every newspaper flush with money and ambition. It was a great, great ride, perhaps never to happen again.”
The author of eight books, Kindred describes how the paper has changed with the digital age in his latest, “Morning Miracle: A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life,” which provides an inside look at The Washington Post at the height of its glory.