Lisa Krantz, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, joins Missouri School of Journalism faculty
COLUMBIA, Mo. (July 24, 2026) — Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lisa Krantz, Ph.D. ’24, is the newest assistant professional practice professor at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Beginning Aug. 1, she will draw on more than 25 years of experience as a photojournalist to teach visual journalism to the next generation of students.
“Lisa’s many years of experience in the field as an award-winning photojournalist, along with her rigorous academic scholarship, make her a valued addition to the School of Journalism,” said David Kurpius, dean of the School. “Her career exemplifies the power of visual journalism to inform, move and build empathy, and students will benefit greatly from her expertise.”
Krantz returns to the School of Journalism after earning her doctoral degree from the School in 2024, though her graduation that year was perhaps overshadowed by the Pulitzer Prize she won alongside colleagues at The Washington Post for her contributions to the 15-part “American Icon” series. For the last two years, she has served as an assistant professor at the University of Montana.
She said her return to Mizzou feels like a homecoming.
“We’re a time-starved society with time-starved readers, but photo stories take time — learning how to do that is really a soft skill. I’m excited to coach students through that process of figuring out how to get access, how to build relationships, how to build trust.”
Lisa Krantz
“I never wanted to leave,” she said. “I had a great job at Montana, but I really love this program. I love the journalism school, all my professors, mentors, the students I still interact with.”
Krantz’s career has taken her all over the country — she started off with half a decade at the Naples Daily News in Florida before moving to the San Antonio Express-News for more than 17 years. And before heading to Missouri and then to Montana, she served as a Nieman Fellow for Journalism at Harvard from 2019-2020.
Through it all, she has nurtured a passion for the picture story, a series of photographs that evokes an impactful visual narrative. And at the School of Journalism, she will finally be able to bring that passion fully into the classroom by teaching the picture story class.
“I’ve taught a lot of different types of classes, but never the picture story, which is really my specialty and what I did for most of my career,” she said. “We’re a time-starved society with time-starved readers, but photo stories take time — learning how to do that is really a soft skill. I’m excited to coach students through that process of figuring out how to get access, how to build relationships, how to build trust.”
Krantz will have plenty of firsthand experience to reference when guiding students through that process, whether that guidance occurs in the classroom, in the School’s professional Missouri News Network newsrooms or in programs like the Missouri Photo Workshop, which draws photographers from all over the country each year to produce photo stories in small-town Missouri.
There was her coverage of the aftermath of a deadly 2017 mass shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which required gaining the trust of a grieving community to capture moments of pain, joy and connection. That work began during her time at the San Antonio Express-News before continuing as a freelance project for The Washington Post, ultimately winning her and more than 75 colleagues the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting.
She also earned a Pulitzer nomination six years earlier for her chronicle of Rowan Windham, who battled a severe genetic disorder as his parents and doctors desperately tried to save his life.
Both of these stories — and many more over the course of her career — involved spending long periods of time getting to know families and community members during periods of trauma. Little wonder, then, that her doctoral dissertation at the School of Journalism centered on trauma-informed journalism. “Embodying an Ethic of Empathy: Journalism’s Intersection with Victims’ Families, Survivors and Community Members Impacted by the Mass Shooting in Uvalde, Texas” won her the 2025 Penn State Davis Ethics Award from The Pennsylvania State University.
“With photography and visual journalism, it can be a very intimate experience because we have to be close to people,” she said. “We can’t do our job from the phone. We can’t do the job from an office. We have to be with people, sometimes in their most vulnerable moments, and truthfully tell their stories. So a lot of my philosophy is focused on ethics and how we treat the people we’re photographing — and how we take care of ourselves in that process as well.”
And in communicating those principles to students, she also hopes to follow in the footsteps of those who made an impact on her during her time as a student. From Columbia Missourian Director of Photography Brian Kratzer and Associate Professor Keith Greenwood to former College Photographer of the Year Director Jackie Bell, as well as Professors Emeriti Rita Reed and David Rees and many others in journalism studies and beyond, she hopes to pay her mentors back by creating meaningful learning experiences for tomorrow’s journalists.
“I learned so much from my professors and mentors at Mizzou,” Krantz said. “They were so supportive and devoted to their students here. It’s just really exciting to think about trying to be what they were for me. I want to be able to give back in the same way that they gave to me, and hopefully the students will have as wonderful of an experience and as much growth as I did.”
Updated: July 24, 2026