User:Crtew/Jon Jeter

Jon Jeter (ca. 1965  – ), an African-American journalist who was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, speaks and reports on issues regarding social and economic injustices across the United States and around the world.

Personal
Jon Jeter grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana where his father worked in the auto industry and his mother was a housekeeper. Jeter graduated from Florida A&M University with a degree in journalism.

Career
Jeter landed his first job as a night reporter for the Star Tribunein Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1987. It was there that Jeter developed a passion for reporting about racial discrepancies and economic inequality in the United States. From there he was the local government reporter for the Detroit Free Press, and reported about Mayor Coleman A. Young, who was the Detroit's first African American mayor. From 1993-2005, Jeter worked for the Washington Post, where he was a police reporter, social policy reporter and assigned to its Midwest Bureau in Chicago, African bureau in South Africa (1999 – 2003), and South American bureau (2003  – 2004). He moved to the NPR radio program This American Life. He worked briefly at TeleSur English in Ecuador. Afterward he has written books and been a columnist for MintPress News.

Notable works of journalism
Jon Jeter has worked on several news stories that earned him finalist spots for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1991 Jeter earned his first recognition for his pieces on race while working at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In 1991 the United States was involved in policies that amplified racial inequality in the United States. The War on Drugs campaign was nearly two full decades into play and sentencing requirements increased the number of young Black men in prisons.

His second story that made it to the finalist round for a Pulitzer Prize was about AIDS in Africa while he was working for the Washington Post in 2000. At that time, Jeter had been working in the Washington Post's African Bureau and reporting first hand on the African continent was experiencing the social devastation as a result of the deadly disease, such as children being orphaned.

Another piece that Jeter is well known for and well respected for is his book on the impacts globalization has had on people entitled: Flat Broke. In this book, Flat Broke in the Free Market: How Globalization Fleeced Working People Jeter demonstrates how it is not just Blacks in America that have suffered financially because of a broken system but also the broader working class. The Washington Post reviewer Roger Atwood said Jeter's "book succeeds in showing the human cost of the sudden opening of vulnerable economies in Africa and, to a lesser extent, Latin America." Susan Gardner of the Daily Kos said this about Jeter's storytelling: "Jeter tells these tales sadly and nobly, with a mingling of melancholy and anger."

Awards

 * Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 1991
 * Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Washington Post, 2000
 * Stanford's Knight Fellowship Recipient