Pulitzer Winner Left Journalism for a PR Job So He Could Pay His Rent
One of today’s Pulitzer winners for local reporting isn’t actually a reporter anymore.
The Daily Breeze’s Rob Kuznia won the prize alongside Rebecca Kimitch for a series on corruption in the Torrance, California school district. Now the former reporter, who had more than 15 years’ experience covering local affairs, is celebrating the career high in his new job... as a publicist.
Apparently, as Kuznia co-reported the award-winning series, he was slowly getting squeezed out of the journalism racket.
Appended to the LA Observed’s coverage of the awards was the following bittersweet update:
We should note that Kuznia left the Breeze and journalism last year and is currently a publicist in the communications department of USC Shoah Foundation. I spoke with him this afternoon and he admitted to a twinge of regret at no longer being a journalist, but he said it was too difficult to make ends meet at the newspaper while renting in the LA area.
The small paper, according to Slate, has around 63,000 subscribers and only seven metro reporters on staff.
It would be nice to think the Pulitzer might help, but it probably won’t.
