WASHINGTON -- James Risser, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington bureau chief of the Des Moines Register, was named Tuesday as the new director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for journalists at Stanford University.
The California university's board of trustees announced Risser, 46, a 1973-74 journalism fellow at Stanford, was the unanimous choice to succeed Lyle Nelson, who will leave the post June 1.
Risser won Pulitzer prizes for national reporting in 1976 and 1979 and also has won the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award for Washington reporting, the Society of Professional Journalists-Sigma Delta Chi award for Washington correspondence, the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting, the Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service Award and the Thomas L. Stokes Award for environmental reporting.
Risser, a graduate of the University of Nebraska who also earned a law degree from the University of San Francisco, went to work for the Register as a reporter in 1964, moved to Washington in 1969 and has been Washington bureau chief since 1976.
He officially starts work at Stanford on April 1 selecting the 1985-86 Knight Fellows, the board said.
The Knight program offers as many as 12 nine-month fellowships a year to American journalists.
