SUNY Fredonia alumnus and Dunkirk, N.Y., native Sean Kirst, ’81, has been named the winner of a Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award.
Kirst, a columnist at the Syracuse Post-Standard, will receive the Ernie Pyle Award for human interest writing. His entry was a collection of columns focusing on stories of ordinary people in Upstate New York whose life experiences defined a challenge or a moment in time. The prize – a trophy and $10,000 – will be awarded at a dinner at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Friday, April 24.
The award is named for the Scripps correspondent who was killed by sniper fire during World War II, and according to the award criteria, “honors newspaper writing that most clearly exemplified the style and craftsmanship of the late Ernie Pyle, who wrote movingly about everyday people with everyday dreams. Human interest, warmth and the faculty of telling a story rank high in the judging.” Kirst noted his father was a great admirer of Pyle, so winning the award honoring the war correspondent is particularly significant.
Kirst was a finalist for the honor in 1997.
While an undergraduate at SUNY Fredonia, Kirst wrote for The Leader student newspaper and worked part-time for the Dunkirk Observer while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in Professional Writing. He paid tribute to former English professors including Drs. Doug Shepard and George Sebouhian, and the late Drs. Richard Kline, Tristram Barnard and William Neville, who, in his words, “all had a powerful and lasting effect on my life and my craft.” Kirst added, “It is a great feeling to have Fredonia listed on my bio for this Ernie Pyle award.”
Kirst also worked for papers in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Rochester. He joined the Post-Standard’s Oswego County bureau in October 1988, later becoming a Syracuse city reporter. In 1991, he was named a sports columnist for the daily, and in 1996, became a metropolitan columnist, which provided the outlet for his award-winning the human interest pieces.
Past winners of the Pyle award include Mike Royko, Greta Tilley, Helen O’Neill, Richard Ben Cramer and Charles Kuralt. Since first given in 1953, only three other New York-based newspaper journalists have received the award, all from the New York City area (two from the New York Times, and one from Newsday).
Kirst and his wife, Fredonia alumna Nora (Butler), ’82, live in Syracuse, where Nora is a teacher at McKinley-Brighton School. The couple has three children: Sarah, 19, Seamus, 18, and Liam, 14.
