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B Y C L A I R E N O WA K , C O M M ’1 6
A SMALL-TOWN EDITOR TURNS A CRY FOR JAIL JUSTICE INTO A PULITZER PRIZE AND REFORM ACROSS TEXAS.
ll Jeff Gerritt wanted was an answer. A 50-yearold woman, Rhonda Newsome, had entered the Anderson County Jail in Palestine, Texas, on assault charges after an alleged scuffle with family members. She stayed there for three months, unable to make bail, and died in her holding cell in June 2018. Then-editor of the Palestine Herald-Press, Gerritt, Grad ’80, wanted to know what happened. The sheriff’s department wouldn’t release any documentation on the death. Gerritt was told video footage from that day was taped over. A year later, the department still wouldn’t budge. So Gerritt did what he did best: He wrote. The resulting series of editorials, “Death Without Conviction,” started as a call for transparency on Newsome’s death and ended up exposing a deadly pattern across Texas’ county jails. It won Gerritt the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing. The journalist has spent decades covering criminal justice and incarceration, a lonely pursuit when he got his start 30
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years ago. “People thought I was a little weird for having this passion for prison work,” he says. “Even my editors thought I was weird.” Over time, he became an authority on prison reform. Inmates have been released because of his work. Yet Gerritt was convinced he was in the twilight of his career when he moved to Palestine. The Herald-Press had a circulation of 3,000, tiny compared with other papers where he’d worked. Hearing of Newsome’s death, he followed the story to uncover the truth — and show himself he still could. A first-generation college student, Gerritt didn’t grow up dreaming of Pulitzers. As a freshman at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, he was in remedial English. He even considered a career as a professional drummer after his band toured with REO Speedwagon. A desire to make a difference and a budding interest in literature led him to Marquette to pursue a master’s in journalism. He had avoided journalism as an undergrad, so he quickly had to learn fundamentals and get comfortable in the field. In dispatching students for interviews around town, a professor and former news reporter helped him acclimate, saying, “I don’t want anyone to get hurt, but I wouldn’t mind if you all got chased.”
