Here are the schools with the most Pulitzer winners (Pulitzers are awarded for the arts as well as journalism):
https://www.bestcolleges.com/features/most-pulitzer-prize-winners/
A school gets credit for both undergrad and grad school.
Harvard (probably mostly in the arts) and Columbia (the graduate J-school would help a lot) lap the field.
Northwestern, Yale, UMich, IU, Iowa, Princeton, UW-Madison, and UIUC round off the top 10.
Somewhat amazing that it’s HYP, Columbia with it’s J-school, NU with Medill, and 5 public Big10 schools.
Because those public Big 10 schools have daily, independent, student-run campus newspapers—and a long history with them. I always tell aspiring journalists that the single most important way to prepare to be a journalist is to go to a college that has a DAILY, independent, student-run newspaper. Walk into the office on day one. Join staff. Stick with it. Move up the editorial ladder through your four years. Major in whatever you want. Preferably not journalism.
An INDEPENDENT student newspaper is one that a) does not get any funds from the university, b) is not part of a class or a requirement for a major, c) does not have a faculty “adviser,” and d) is not censored or pre-read by faculty or university officials.
How do you know if it’s independent? Go to website. Click into the About section. Independent student newspapers proudly tout it.
The Michigan Daily
https://www.michigandaily.com/
Indiana Daily Student
http://www.idsnews.com/
The Daily Iowan
http://daily-iowan.com/
The Daily Illini
https://dailyillini.com/
U-W Madison has TWO independent, daily, student-run papers:
The Daily Cardinal
http://www.dailycardinal.com/
The Badger Herald
https://badgerherald.com/
Overall Pulitzer totals may be misleading because there are so many non-journalism categories. But here are the educational backgrounds of individuals who have won Pulitzers over the past decade in several prominent journalism categories, to the extent that information is available on the Pulitzer website. (Some bios don’t include college affiliation, some are awarded to “staff” of particular publications, and some are awarded to multi-person teams which may or may not include colleges in their bios).
Investigative reporting:
Loyola (New Orleans), USF;
UIUC
U Vermont
U Richmond, Mizzou
Northwestern
Colby
Maryland
Villanova
Ohio State
Purdue
Southern Illinois
Mizzou
Western Maryland College
Stanford
Northwestern
Wisconsin, Ohio State
Dartmouth
- National reporting*
Harvard
MIT
Mizzou
San Diego State
Middlebury, Columbia
UC Berkeley, Columbia
Colorado
Princeton
International Reporting:
University of the City of Manila
Brown, Columbia
Boston University
Cornell, Oxford
Princeton
Yale
Wisconsin
So the Ivies seem to be heavily represented in international and to some extent national reporting. The Big Ten dominates in investigative reporting.
More Pulitzer journalism categories, 2008-present:
Feature writing
Cornell, Columbia
Colorado
Smith, MIT, Columbia
UVA
Editorial writing
Iowa State
St. Thomas (MN)
Indiana
Dartmouth
Texas Tech, Georgetown
Kansas
UT-Austin
Ithaca College
Commentary
Alabama
Fairleigh Dickenson
Harvard
UT-Austin
Chicago, LSE
Pomona, Stanford
Yale
University of Valencia (Spain), Florida State
Michigan
Trinity College
Explanatory reporting
Deep Springs college, Harvard
SUNY Binghamton
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Mizzou
San Francisco State
U of Maine
Arizona State, U of the West Indies (Jamaica)
Michigan
On the whole, the “elite” colleges as defined by the authors of the study cited in the OP do fairly well, but by no means do they dominate. Which brings me back to my regionalism hypothesis. I’ll bet if someone did a complete study of the college affiliations at the NY Times and WSJ, it would conclude that “graduates of colleges in the Northeast dominate the newsrooms of the NYT and WSJ,” and that result would be more robust than the “elite colleges” finding. Not so many Western, Midwestern, or Southern elite college grads in the NYT and WSJ bios I’ve seen, so the heavily represented “elite colleges” are pretty much a subset of Northeastern colleges.
“WBEZ is not even close to NYT as a major news outlet. Its a radio station. Apples and Oranges.”
It’s misleading (however I realize it was click bait) to say elite colleges dominate major newsrooms and then only survey two newsrooms. LA Times e.g. which is a major news outlet, here’s the editorial staff undergrad college:
U of Missouri
Illinois State
UCLA
Berkeley
Kansas State
Harvard
U of Evansville
Yale
SJSU
So you four elite (HY, UCB, UCLA) and five non-elite. Four is by no stretch dominant, it’s not even a majority.
@theloniusmonk, Cal and UCLA wouldn’t even qualify as elite under the study’s definition.
But in the media feeders ranking (which is done on a per capita basis), both Cal and UCLA as well as Mizzou make the top 20 while Yale doesn’t.
Advancing the regionalism hypothesis:
The Chicago Tribune’s 10-person editorial board has only 3 grads of “elite” colleges as defined in the study cited in the OP, and two of those are local (Northwestern); the other is a Harvard alum. Eight of the 10 graduated from Midwestern schools—2 apiece from Northwestern and Loyola-Chicago, and 1 apiece from Wisconsin, Ohio U, Illinois-Springfield, and Western Illinois. The only graduates of out-of-region colleges are one from Harvard and one from Arizona State.
On The New York Times 11-person editorial board, I could find educational bios on only 10. Of those, 7 got their undergrad degrees in the Northeast—one each at Yale, Harvard, Georgetown, NYU, SUNY Binghamton, Widener, and Regis College (MA). Of these, only Yale and Harvard are deemed"elite" in the study cited, though of those attending non-elite undergraduate institutions, two got Master’s degrees at Columbia J School and one got a Ph.D. at Chicago, so that would bring the “elite” count up to 5 using the study’s methodology. The out-of-region schools were Michigan, Michigan State, and TCU with one apiece. Importantly, not a single one was hired by the Times directly out of college or grad school; the rest had at least one and in most cases multiple multi-year journalism jobs elsewhere before joining the Times, suggesting the Times hired them more for their proven professional excellence rather than their academic credentials.