Michael LaForgia, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and USC alumnus, gave a lecture on Wednesday night encouraging aspiring journalists to continue pursuing investigative journalism despite the declining availability of jobs in the industry.
“No, things are not great right now,” LaForgia said about the journalism business. However, he urged students not to give up.
“It has never been easier for talented young people to move up quickly in this business," he said.
The lecture, titled “Local Investigative Reporting Is Not Dead,” also covered the older generation of journalist's cynicism towards the current state of investigative journalism.
“The people who are doing this work deserve better than to be written off by bitter assholes who aren’t fully in the know about what’s going on," LaForgia said.
College of Information and Communications Dean Charles Bierbauer said that the School of Journalism at USC does not regularly teach courses on investigative journalism; however, it does offer variations of the subject in courses about research and data reporting.
“We are more inclined to include investigative journalism as a component of what journalism is all about,” Bierbauer said.
LaForgia graduated with a B.A. in English from USC in 2005. He is currently investigations editor at the Tampa Bay Times, a job which he inherited from a fellow USC Grad, Chris Davis.
While at USC, LaForgia was the editor-in-chief of The Daily Gamecock. He won his first Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for exposing mistreatment of the homeless in Florida, and he claimed a second in 2016 for reporting on five failing schools in Florida.
Many of LaForgia's peers from his time at USC were in attendance for the lecture. Chas McCarthy, who worked with him at The Daily Gamecock, noted that LaForgia was working on investigative reporting all the way back during his time as an undergraduate.