March 18, 2019
Journalist Kristen Gelineau, who wrote about how a law revealing sperm and egg donors affected the people involved, will be honored with the 2019 Eugene S. Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award on March 28 at Ball State University.
The award, sponsored by the Pulliam family and coordinated by Ball State, honors outstanding writing in United States-based newspapers and magazines. Three previous winners of the prestigious Pulliam Award have subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.
Gelineau, a global enterprise correspondent for the Associated Press and the AP bureau chief for Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific, will give her presentation, “Reporting with Humanity,” at 7:30 p.m. March 28 in Cardinal Hall of the Pittenger Student Center. The event is free and open to the public.
Gelineau’s award-winning article, “Law ending sperm donor secrecy helps Australian find her dad,” tells the story of a woman connecting with her biological father after legislative reform in Victoria, Australia, retroactively stripped anonymity from sperm and egg donors.
She joined The Associated Press in 2002. For the next six years, she worked in AP bureaus in Seattle; Olympia, Washington; Cleveland; and Richmond, Virginia. In Virginia, she covered death row, natural disasters, and led AP’s coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. In 2008, she transferred to AP’s bureau in Sydney, where she has written about everything from indigenous people’s rights to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to Australian culture and crime. She holds a degree in journalism from Boston University.
By Marc Ransford, Senior Communications Strategist