Stephen A. Kurkjian is an American journalist and author. He received the

Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting The Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting has been awarded since 1953, under one name or another, for a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single article or series in a U.S. news publicat ...

in 1972 and 1980. Additionally, he contributed to ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'' Spotlight Team's coverage of the clergy abuse scandal within the

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston The Archdiocese of Boston ( la, Archidiœcesis Bostoniensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church located in the New England region of the United States. Its territorial remit encompasses the whole of ...

that was awarded the

Pulitzer Prize for Public Service The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for journalism. It recognizes a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site through the use of its journalis ...

in 2003. He also received the

George Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...

in 1982 and 1994. He won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award in 1995.

Life

Stephen Kurkjian is of

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

descent. A lifelong Bostonian, he is a graduate of the

Boston Latin School The Boston Latin School is a public exam school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established on April 23, 1635, making it both the oldest public school in the British America and the oldest existing school in the United States. Its curriculum f ...

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...

(1966) and the Suffolk University School of Law (1970). Kurkjian attended the latter institution as a part-time student while working as a general assignment reporter for the State House News Service and the ''Globe'' and remains a member of the Massachusetts Bar. Along with former wife Ann Kurkjian Crane, he became a founding member of the Spotlight Team (now the oldest investigative journalism unit in the United States) in 1970; from 1979 to 1986, he served as the unit's editor. He also served as the newspaper's Washington bureau chief and senior assistant metropolitan editor for projects before retiring in 2007. His father, an artist, was a survivor of the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...

of 1915. His cousin is

sportswriter Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism started in the early 1800s when it was targeted to the social elite and transitioned into an integral part of the n ...

Tim Kurkjian Tim Kurkjian (; born December 10, 1956) is a Major League Baseball (MLB) analyst on ESPN's '' Baseball Tonight'' and ''SportsCenter''. He is also a contributor to '' ESPN The Magazine'' and ''ESPN.com''. On December 7, 2021, Kurkjian was named ...

Peter J. Quinn Investigation

In November 2005, Kurkjian contacted Massachusetts officials about conference trips made by the state's CIO, Peter J. Quinn. Kurkjian then wrote an article for the ''Globe'' suggesting a

conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations i ...

by Quinn. Conference organizers paid part of Quinn's trip expenses, and “a galaxy of computer companies are listed as sponsors of many of the conferences.” The state investigated and cleared Quinn. He was in demand as a conference speaker because of his division's initiative to adopt for state documents the

Open Document Format The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed ...

in place of

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

formats. After Quinn was exonerated, he resigned and said in an interview, “It was apparent from the questions that were coming from the ''Globe'' after the initial entry that things that had never occurred were being fed to the ''Globe'' to add more gasoline to the fire. In fairness to everyone close to me, it was time to say enough is enough.”

References

American male journalists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Boston Latin School alumni American people of Armenian descent Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting winners The Boston Globe people {{US-journalist-20thC-stub