Lauryn Higgins is one of the newest University of Arkansas adjunct professors in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media. But beyond that, she’s also a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. Higgins won her Pulitzers for her reporting, tracking COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She has written for The New York Times, NPR, Teen Vogue and many other publications. She recently found herself in Arkansas after her husband began working for Walmart. Earlier this month, Ozarks at Large’s Casey Mann spoke to Higgins in the Karen Taha News Studio about her career.
Lauryn Higgins: So we moved here in February and I was eight and a half months pregnant at the time, so I gave birth in March, so I kind of took about two to three months off. And then I was thinking, you know, I previously had taught at the University of Nebraska for eight years, I believe, as an adjunct, and I loved it. I obviously couldn’t stay doing that because we were here. So I ended up actually just reaching out to the college at the university and was like, ‘Hey, this is who I am, this is what I do. If you have any openings as like an adjunct, I would just, you know, love to be considered. Would love to just chat.’ And the dean responded within two hours and was like, hey, come on in, let’s definitely have a conversation. We have a couple classes. And it really happened pretty quickly.
Mann: What makes you kind of want to teach new journalists? What drives you there?
Higgins: Oh, I think that’s the best part of teaching is just being with the next generation of reporters. I personally learned so much from them. I think that’s probably been the most fun is to work with students who, like, kind of like yourself, you know, students who are just starting and just seeing that passion that they have. It really keeps me going, especially on certain days when the job gets tough. I just love working with students, again, like I said, just because I get to learn from them and also kind of help them figure out what exactly it is they want to do because there is so much you can do within this industry and kind of watching them get excited about certain things and really kind of helping them carve out their own path is like been probably the best part.
Mann: Beyond academia, can we talk a little bit about the Pulitzer Prize of it all? You won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2021 for your work at The New York Times tracking COVID-19, and your reporting not only tracked COVID cases across the country, but you actually focused in on a topic that a lot of people in Fayetteville tend to really care about — college sports. So I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that project and sort of how it came about?
Higgins: Yeah, absolutely. So COVID, as we know now, was a beast when it was starting out. We really didn’t know too much about it. So in March of 2020, I got put on this project and we were literally tracking case by case in a spreadsheet. So this was when we were having cases kind of slowly come in and by July of 2020 it was in full force. I was looking at a really small newspaper, I believe, in Alabama or Mississippi, and I saw that there were two 20-year-olds who had gotten COVID. But in the story at the bottom, it said that they were football players at Ole. I think it was Alabama or something like that. And I was like, oh, I was like college sports. Like people are going back to, like, like students are going back to or they’re supposed to be going back to campus soon. But like, that’s like, how is that going to affect college sports? I ran track in college. You know, I was on scholarship. And so then I was thinking, well, like, are scholarships going to be affected for these students. So it kind of spiraled from there. So I pitched it to my editor, Mitch Smith, and he’s a huge college sports fan. So I knew I kind of had an end there. And he’s like, let’s go for it. So we started tracking every known COVID case within college sports. And so that started in July. And we published that story, I believe, at the end of October. And I think by the end there were hundreds of cases within college sports, and a lot of departments didn’t really want to tell us, you know, they were very quiet about what they could and couldn’t report. And then some were very open and very eager to tell us everything. So I learned a lot in that process as well, just kind of about how to, I guess, communicate with athletic departments.
Mann: And then your second Pulitzer, you won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for your work tracking the Russian invasion of Ukraine at The New York Times as well. I mean, that must be a surreal feeling. Could you tell us about some of the work that went into that project, and how do you even become a part of something like that?
Higgins: No, those are great questions. And I still sometimes wonder how I became a part of it. Journalism is such a crazy field. I think you are like one day just, you know, reporting on a very, like, basic story and then it spirals into like a pandemic and then you basically. So with this story with, um, I was reporting on COVID still and Russia invaded Ukraine, and overnight we got pulled from the COVID story to work on this. And it was really just a handful of us who were pulled from the COVID team to do this, just based off our expertise that we had. I guess because tracking something like this is very specific. It’s very time consuming. And we had already kind of been doing it with COVID, and I’m a very type A person. I probably was one of the more type A people on the team, which is probably why I was pulled to do this. I have my bachelor’s in accounting, so I love a spreadsheet. I love just looking at data. So I was pulled to this team and our job on this certain story and what they wanted us to do was to track the weapons and specifically track the weapons that had been deployed, I guess is the proper term, into Ukraine. And so we basically went through every single picture we could find from either credible Facebook posts, Twitter posts, and then we had reporters on the ground who were sending in a wire. So we got pictures from them as well. And we basically cataloged every single weapon into a spreadsheet. And we cataloged where we could basically see where we could, like, figure out where it hit. A lot of times they were, you know, hitting schools, hitting food sources like factories, farms. So we could really pinpoint on a map where that kind of was. And then from there, we could kind of see if they had a strategy of how they were trying to attack. And basically what we found was that there really was no strategy. They were just kind of hitting as fast and as hard as they could and kind of hit really kind of whatever.
Mann: That’s a huge story. And obviously it’s something that impacts a lot of people. So I’m just wondering how you kind of deal with knowing the impact of the things you’re reporting on. How do you kind of compartmentalize that almost or comprehend the scale of what you’re reporting on?
Higgins: No, that’s a great question. And I will say, my editors have been nothing but wonderful. They’re very compassionate people. My editor was a— or she is still obviously a mom. And she was always very upfront about like, if you need to, like, you know, just take a day off, that’s totally fine. Some of the pictures we saw were very intense to look at. You know, children were dead. And a lot of times you don’t really know what you’re going to look at until it just kind of pops up on the screen. So you’re kind of just hoping and praying it’s not going to be anything too intense. But also, at the end of the day, we all recognized our privilege of being able to be on this side of the screen, being the ones looking at it and not the ones experiencing it. So I think that kind of is what keeps you going. And you also know that the work you’re doing is helping people and, or at least hopefully in the months to come, will have some kind of positive impact on this horrible—I mean, just people being killed every day is just despicable. So I think that’s what really kept us going. And yeah, we discussed it in Slack sometimes if things were, you know, hard or heavy, and every now and then we’d get a really positive picture and share that in the Slack thread. So I think things like that keep you going. But just also this job is such a privilege to do. And at the end of the day, this work is so important, and that’s what kept us getting out of bed every day and doing the job.
Mann: And about how many people are on a team working on something like that?
Higgins: So on that specific story, there were seven of us with an editor. I believe it was, yeah, seven or eight of us. And then for the Pulitzer itself, it was a compilation of stories. And so those stories had like either between two and three people or another like five or six.
Mann: And when you were covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that team was made up entirely of women.
Higgins: Yes, yes.
Mann: Can you tell me a little bit about what that’s like, kind of the significance of something like that?
Higgins: It was so crazy because it wasn’t planned or anything. We all were kind of just picked from the COVID team to come over to work on this. And the men on the team who would have been picked just were truly out of town that week, or they were on spring break with their kids or something. It was not planned. And so we all just kind of hopped on a Zoom call and we didn’t say anything, but we all kind of looked at each other like, oh, it’s just us girls. Like it’s just a girls club on here. And so I don’t know if that’s significant in any way as far as a Pulitzer. But I do think that really stood out to me. And I think I’ve said this before to people, but because of the Pulitzer and we did win that, it’s something I’m really proud of. Just because the work specifically was about heinous crimes that Russia was doing. And Putin obviously does not like reporters. He does not like women. So a team of female reporters coming in and winning this huge award reporting on the things he’s done was very—yeah, it was a good day.
Mann: Now, winning a Pulitzer Prize is something most of us will never experience. So I just have to ask, what goes through your head in a moment when you find out you’ve won something like that? Could you maybe take us through one of those moments?
Higgins: I never even thought about it being a possibility. I remember telling my husband on one of our first dates, I was like, a pipe dream is just to have a story in The New York Times. Truly, it was just to have one story. So to get to be a part of these two big stories and then to win Pulitzers for each of them, I still don’t always believe it. It still feels very surreal. I know you’re not supposed to have imposter syndrome, but I definitely do on certain days. But the first one we were actually—I was actually on vacation. It was my first time taking time off. We had been working on the story. So how Pulitzers work is that they are given the calendar year after the story’s published. So this story obviously was in 2020, but we didn’t get it until 2021. So I was in Seattle, actually. We were up there just to have some time off for a week. And I remember I was just laying in bed, scrolling on Twitter, which was still a thing back then. And I remember one of my teammates who was on our team, she also took off some time and she tweeted, she was like, ‘Oh my goodness, we just won a Pulitzer.’ And I was like, wait, I’m on this team with you? Does that mean I won one? And then not even like 20 seconds later, my editor texted me and he was like, hey, can you hop on a call? And I was like, oh my gosh, I was in my pajamas still. It was beyond surreal. I think I just couldn’t—I mean, yeah, it’s just one of those, I think you think if that’s ever going to happen to you, you’re going to be in a really nice outfit. You’re going to be in downtown Manhattan, you know, looking incredible. And it was 10 a.m. in a hotel in Seattle. And I was in my pajamas. And it’s still one of the best days of my life, for sure.
Mann: You talked a little bit about imposter syndrome, and I’m just wondering how you deal with something like that, especially after everything that you’ve accomplished.
Higgins: I think it’s something I have to remind myself that, you know, I have a daughter now, and I have a son, and I want them to see, you know, not only their parent, but also just a woman out there doing work that she’s proud of, doing work specifically in this field that, you know, it’s so important, especially right now, to be doing this type of work. So I definitely have days where I really struggle and I really think, like, you know, I don’t deserve this or, you know, if I don’t get a story picked up, then I definitely feel like, yeah, I probably did deserve that. I’m not as good at this job as I thought I was. But then I have to remind myself, you know, I’ve put in the work, I’m educated, I love what I do, and I think at the end of the day, that’s the most important thing. And I just, I think we all have days like that too. So I kind of also think about that, that there are people out there far more qualified than I am who probably struggled the same way. And we just have to kind of brush it off and get back up and keep doing this job because it’s so important.
Mann: Earlier you said that you studied accounting originally, so journalism wasn’t your original career path or at least the one you planned on. What inspired you originally to make that change and dive into journalism?
Higgins: I love NPR. It’s what I grew up on. My dad and I would always listen to NPR in the car every Saturday on the way to lunch. So this was kind of my first dive into reporting — was NPR. And I think deep down I always knew I wanted to be a journalist, but I just didn’t know how to really get into it. No one in my family was really involved in it, but everyone in my family had a degree in business. It felt like a very safe bet, a very safe route. I got a scholarship to run track, and they didn’t have any type of journalism program at the school. So I said, I’ll just get a degree in business and be safe. And so I got the degree in accounting. But while I was on campus, there really were a lot of opportunities to do photography and the yearbook. And it was paid and I was like, oh my gosh. So I started slowly tiptoeing into this field that way. And by like year two or year three, I was like, this is all I want to do. So I got my first internship at a newspaper in Asheville, North Carolina. Wasn’t paid, but I literally loved it so much. Being in a space like that with all these reporters who’ve been doing this job for decades, I was like, okay, this is what I’m going to do. And so I got my degree in accounting, and I kept interning for free until I could really get my first job in journalism. And yeah, that’s how I got here.
Lauryn Higgins is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and an adjunct professor at the University of Arkansas. She spoke with Ozarks at Large’s Casey Mann earlier this month.
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