'I owe Springfield a lot': SHS grad, part of Pulitzer Prize-winning team to address event

Matt McKinney recalled how his third-fourth grade teacher at Ball Charter School, Iris Baxter, had "a newspaper wall" in her classroom, encouraging students to clip out and post top headlines of the day from the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune and The State Journal-Register.

That was almost second nature for McKinney. His mother, Maureen Foertsch McKinney, and father, Dave McKinney, both worked at newspapers.

"(The newspaper wall) really got me thinking how big the world was and complex it was and how interconnected it was and sort of how you fit into it," said Matt McKinney, 33.

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McKinney went on to follow his parents into the profession.

Not yet 30, McKinney was a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette when the newspaper was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting of the shooting deaths of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue.

McKinney will reflect on reaching journalism's pinnacle and his formative years at the Springfield Public Schools Foundation dinner at Erin's Pavillion on March 9.

A work conflict will prevent McKinney, who now lives in the Los Angeles area with his girlfriend, Kate Mishkin, from attending the dinner, but he planned on sending a videotaped message, foundation officials said.

"I owe Springfield a lot and the opportunity to say 'thank you' is always something I'm excited to do," said McKinney in a recent phone interview.

The dinner is a main fundraiser for the foundation and includes musical performances by the Lanphier High School choir and pianist Dominick Powell, also from Lanphier, and an art auction.

Foundation director Ryan Croke said the idea of getting McKinney to share some of the formative experiences from his time as a student in Springfield should remind Springfield residents "what an extraordinary educational experience is possible in District 186 schools and what exciting career prospects are available to young people who are part of the 186 family."

McKinney had been an education reporter at the Post-Gazette less than a year when congregation members in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood were attacked by a gunman during services on Oct. 27, 2018.

Though he wasn't part of the newspaper's initial coverage, McKinney did his fair share of reporting in the weeks after, including a remembrance piece on one of the victims and how schools addressed the fallout.

"I think there was a feeling among educators that they had a role of at least being a support system for students who were traumatized and completely stricken by something so awful happening in their community," McKinney said.

One memory he admitted he kept drifting back to in the process was his own experience in the aftermath of Springfield getting slammed by a pair of tornadoes in 2006.

"I remember the very next day folks being in each other's front yards helping clear debris," said McKinney, a student at Springfield High School at the time. "There was just this sense of sort of kindness and resilience and being there for each other that I think makes a place worth living in. Springfield always felt that way to me and that was something I saw parallels to in Pittsburgh, and other places, in hard moments."

McKinney said he was in the Post-Gazette newsroom when the award was announced, though he recalled the event was so fresh that "any excitement was tempered by the bigger feeling of grief."

In 2020, he took a buyout from the Post-Gazette and now works as the space editor for a Northrop Grumman employee magazine.

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Lydia Negele, who was McKinney's advisor at his Springfield High School newspaper and still teaches at SHS, said McKinney only wrote for the school newspaper as a senior when he professed more interest in journalism as a career.

"He was naturally a good writer and he wanted to do the more serious articles," Negele recalled. "That was the innate part of him."

Negele said she wasn't surprised that McKinney had a successful run in journalism. Being part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team?

"Anybody who crosses my path, I tell them (about McKinney)," she said. "That's the coolest thing a teacher can ever say about a student."

McKinney said he found nurturing and toughness in equal proportions from teachers and coaches from Ball Charter to Lincoln Magnet School to SHS.

"The best teachers, I think," McKinney said, "have a way of seeing potential in students even when they can't always see it in themselves and then helping them to unlock that. That was the story of me in District 186. I can't tell you how many times I had teachers who kind of did just that, who were encouraging and supportive but held you accountable when you needed to be held accountable.

"I'm just really grateful."

Read a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article to which Matt McKinney contributed on Tree of Life Synagogue victim Melvin Wax here.

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; [email protected]; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Springfield man was part of Pulitzer Prize-winning team in Pittsburgh