2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist and alum Brendan McCarthy visits campus

Brendan McCarthy ’04, staff writer at The Times-Picayune and 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist, spoke to a packed room of Emerson students recently about his experience as a journalist working the crime beat in New Orleans.

Since joining The Times-Picayune in December 2006, McCarthy covered violence, the police department, and the city’s criminal justice system. His eight-part series, Homicide 37, was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting. The Homicide 37 series chronicled the investigation into an all-too-routine murder of a New Orleans teenager.

McCarthy was also named the winner of the 2009 Mike Berger Award, a national prize conferred by Columbia University for in-depth, human-interest reporting. Before working at The Times-Picayune, McCarthy was a metro reporting resident at the Chicago Tribune.