By Beth Goodbaum

Gabriel H. Gluck, a University alumnus and former editor-in-chief of The Chronicle, became part of a Pulitzer Prize winning team at The Star-Ledger this month.

The 1975 graduate and his colleagues won the award for their coverage on the resignation of former New Jersey governor, James E. McGreevy. McGreevy stepped down after admitting he had an affair with another man last August.

During the widely-publicized scandal, Gluck’s task was to track down and interview Attorney General Peter Harvey, whose office was said to have information on the resignation.

Gluck and fellow reporters who covered the story for the Newark-based The Star-Ledger were each awarded $10,000 for their distinguished example of local reporting and breaking news.

Gluck, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history, said he entered college with the hope of becoming an astronomer. However, “as physics [courses] became harder and harder” and “the thought of working on a remote mountain top somewhere after graduation seemed unpractical,” Gluck switched his science major to history. He also wrote for the campus newspaper.

“I fell in love with reporting while writing for The Chronicle,” Gluck said. He worked his way from staff writer to news editor and eventually to editor-in-chief of the paper. After graduation, Gluck said he applied to various local and daily papers and watched the rejection letters accumulate.

“Three quarters of those rejection letters came from newspapers that don’t even exist anymore,” he said.

As a journalist, Gluck said he has had the pleasure of reporting on and meeting former President Jimmy Carter and covering the elections last fall.

“I’ve met people I probably would have never been able to meet because of reporting,” he said.

Ten years after receiving his bachelor’s degree, Gluck said he decided to go back to school so he could teach. He received his master’s degree in journalism and mass communications from New York University, and is now a part-time media professor at Kean University in Union, N.J.

The Pulitzer Prize is just one of many awards he has received during his career. He won several awards from the New Jersey Press Association, as well as a Scripps-Howard First Amendment Award, American Medical Writers Association award, an award from the Governor’s Committee on the Disabled and from Ganett for his reporting.

More than 2,000 entries are submitted each year with only 21 being awarded, according to the Pulitzer Prize’s Web site. Pulitzer awards, which were first given in 1917, are awarded by the trustees of Columbia University based on the recommendations of an advisory board.

Gluck is not the only alumnus that has won the Pulitzer. In 1983, former University student Manuela Hoelterhoff also won for her reporting in The Wall Street Journal.

As a journalist, Gabriel Gluck had the opportunity to meet President Jimmy Carter. (Photo courtesy Gabriel Gluck)