Two-time Pulitizer Prize-winner Dana Priest spoke at the Sanford School Monday Photo credit: David Jarmul

Durham, NC - Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Dana Priest had a word of advice Monday afternoon for Duke students considering a career in journalism: Listen.

"I think it's important that you learn to listen as a reporter," she said to an audience of nearly 100 students and others at the Sanford School of Public Policy. "Listen to what they're saying. Listen to what they're not saying. Listen to their body language."

Presenting the Ewing Lecture on Ethics in Journalism, The Washington Post reporter described investigative reporting as "journalism's highest calling."

She discussed the two Post series for which she received her profession's highest honor. The first was on CIA secret prisons and counterterrorism operations overseas; the second about the appalling conditions she uncovered at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In both cases, she described a relentless process of revealing secrets previously hidden by intelligence officers and other government officials.

Saying she is a working reporter rather than a business strategist, Priest said she could not offer any insights into how newspapers can overcome their economic problems, but she argued that their future lies with work such as her own. "Eventually newspapers are going to figure out that the only thing they can do uniquely is investigative work," she said.

Her advice to Duke students was to look past the industry's economic problems, saying "someone will figure it out." According to Priest, what students should focus on instead is journalism's traditional role as society's watchdog. "If you're interested in journalism," she told them, "you should go and pursue that."